This teacher-centred article explores specifics therapeutic pedagogies that help people ‘vent’ their traumas and issues. It contains lots of practical suggestions based on research evidence, and offers a rationale for ‘letting it all spill out’ in educational settings.

This academic, peer-reviewed article is a piece of research which shows how freewriting and drawing can have a therapeutic effect when working online. It draws upon the experience of my students and my colleagues, Dr Miranda Matthews. It also suggests a methodology for this approach.

This academic, peer-reviewed research article explores the different reasons why creative writing is taught. One of the purposes I suggest, based on my research, is ‘to heal’, in other words, creative writing is taught as a form of therapy. I suspect this happens more than is actually openly stated. Many teachers set therapeutic tasks such as freewriting, storytelling about a different psychological issue etc (like bullying, childhood trauma etc), so that the authors can learn and grow from the experience of writing about it.

This article explores how I became ‘aesthetically literate’ in my life; how I used other artistic work to educate and heal myself. It argues that ‘aesthetic literacy’ is just as important, if not more important, than other forms of literacy because of its therapeutic dimensions.