Jen Gash
There are so many myths around creativity, the arts and what it means to be creative. These myths often serve as barriers to our natural, creative selves being able to do what we want to do. As a life long artist, professional coach and occupational therapist, I know these issues rather too well. I admit that I probably wrote this book to help myself finally understand and overcome my personal challenges but the learning I discovered will be important for all coaches aiming to help others.
Biography
I started painting furiously as a teen, but sadly believed that a career in the creative arts was not a real job. After starting work in Human Resources, I later trained as an Occupational Therapist (OT) and worked in a variety of setting across health and social care for the next 20 years.Whilst breastfeeding my second child, I fell into coaching and attended my first coach training program. It transformed my work and home life and the coming years saw me specialize in creativity coaching and work to integrate coaching into OT. I trained as a Kaizen Muse Creativity Coach and later with Analytic Network Coaching.
Understanding my creativity and working with it rather than against liberated my work in so many ways and I established Discovery Party which uses fun and creative ways to work with groups and communities. I also started painting much, much more!
Writing helped me paint more and painting helps me write more and create other interesting things too! As well as the Coaching Creativity text, I am co-author of an Occupational Therapy Coaching book due out autumn 2016.
Education
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BSc Hons Occupational Therapy
Various coach training!
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Creativity
Creative process
Coaching creativity
Occupational Performance Coaching
Coaching complex challenges/illness
Personal Interests
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Painting
Folk music
Comedy
Hosting parties
Creating weird stuff
Websites
Books
Videos
Published: Oct 11, 2016
A short video about the imposter syndrome...something common to many of us.
Published: Oct 11, 2016
A short video about how we often take our struggles with us, be they creative struggles or general life struggles. Worth a watch as you will recognize the issues discussed!