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What is good art therapy supervision?

Good supervision supports self-awareness, reflexivity, and efficacy (Lohany & Sharma, 2023) and mitigates burnout (Davies et al., 2022). However, in the numerous supervision trainings I have delivered over the past decades, art therapists have shared both inspiring and bruising supervision experiences.

Art therapists registered with the HCPC are required to engage in regular clinical supervision throughout their careers. But what makes for good art therapy supervision? What makes it unhelpful or harmful? As Rees asked:

Definitions of supervision vary, reflecting the supervisor’s approach and the context. I usually describe supervision as a creative, art-based space (online or in-person) for thinking about work, developing knowledge and understanding of clients and organisations, supporting supervisees’ confidence, reflexivity, and wellbeing, and ensuring best practice within a bio-psycho-socio-cultural framework.

Good supervision relies on a strong working alliance between supervisor and supervisees (Bordin, 1983). Providing a trustworthy, interactive framework and initiating exploration of power dynamics and of cultural and diversity issues with all supervisees are also essential elements of good supervision and help to build trust in the supervisory alliance.

Importantly for art therapists, keeping art at the heart of art therapy supervision is essential to enriching our understanding of complex processes and to maintaining our art therapy identity.

Good art therapy supervision is vital, especially now

The current, unprecedented cuts to health, care, and education services mean that practitioners are facing growing workloads in challenging circumstances, and incidents of burnout are increasing (Razai et al., 2023). Burnout can impact not only a therapist’s mental and physical health but also the quality of care given to service users.

The reflective space of effective supervision has never been more necessary, yet it is often difficult to allocate time for this in current circumstances. Supervision can shift toward a crisis-management model, which also affects the use of art-based processes: when there are many pressing issues to address within a session, allocating time to artmaking may seem indulgent or dispensable. Yet, art therapists have practice-based experience of how art helps untangle inner conflicts and confusion, and sustain hope and resilience in adverse circumstances.

Cutting down on supervision and art-based processes may be a response to pressure to ‘do more with less’, but it may contribute to doing less and doing it less well for our service users, our organisations and ourselves.

What makes supervision unhelpful, ineffective and harmful – and what can make it better?  

Supervision can be unhelpful and harmful when supervisors lack sensitivity and competence regarding issues of diversity, are overly critical, authoritarian, or dismissive toward the supervisee, or focus intrusively on personal issues (Chircop Coleiro et al., 2023). Supervisors’ poor personal and professional competencies are also linked to harmful supervision, an experience that can profoundly impact confidence and create “palpable pain” for supervisees (Hutman et al., 2023, p. 743).

While many art therapy practice attributes are essential to supervision, supervisors need additional knowledge on how systemic, organisational, and cultural issues impact practice and supervisees. Supervisors may also need to consider how power dynamics affect supervision, particularly when supervising trainees who are assessed by them.

Supervision is not always a smooth process, and misunderstandings or miscommunication can sometimes strain or rupture the supervisory alliance (Watkins et al., 2019). Rupture repair should be initiated by the supervisor, prioritising the supervisee’s welfare and exploring potential miscommunication.

A lack of clarity can lead to miscommunication. A formal contracting process mitigates this by providing an opportunity to articulate the supervisor’s approach and clarify mutual expectations. Yearly reviews can be scheduled to assess whether the supervision continues to meet the supervisee’s needs; embedding these in contracts supports transparency and helps prevent supervision from becoming ineffective.

What do supervisees say they need? 

In 2025, I conducted an online international survey of art therapists, and 225 international respondents rated these five elements highest when asked, ‘What supports good supervision?’:

• ‘Mutual trust between supervisor and supervisee’;
• ‘Respectful and helpful challenging’;
• and equally ranked, ‘Supervisor’s trustworthy knowledge’, ‘Supervisor’s knowledge of clients and work context’, and ‘Interactive engagement from supervisor and supervisee’ (Huet, 2025).

Psychotherapy and counselling research supports these data, finding that supervisors’ personal qualities of empathy and openness, as well as an interactive, respectful, and flexible approach, contribute to effective supervision (Chircop Coleiro et al., 2023).

Cultural humility plays an equally important role when supervisors are open to learning, enquiring and introducing discussions on these issues: “Multiculturally competent supervisors were described as affirming, non-pathologizing, and not oversimplifying issues of diversity.” (Chircop Coleiro et al., 2023, p. 199).

What does this mean for art therapy supervision?

Art therapists worldwide have developed and integrated innovative art-based processes into their supervisory practice, including Response Art (Fish, 2008; Nash, 2021) and the El Duende Process Painting, a one-canvas approach to art-based supervision (Miller, 2012; Miller & Robb, 2017). This reflects confidence in our art-based competencies and provides a solid foundation for effective art therapy supervision: art-based processes can facilitate not only reflection on practice but also the exploration of cultural and diversity issues within the supervisory relationship.

However, we need to pay equal attention to the framework of supervision and to the question, as Rees did, of whether being an experienced art therapy practitioner translates into being a good supervisor.

Finally, what about the impact of supervision on our service users? Evidence from psychotherapy on whether supervision improves client outcomes remains sparse (Watkins, 2020), as is the case for art therapy. However, good supervision helped me rebuild self-confidence and strength when challenging sessions had left me feeling defeated and hopeless. This was often reflected in the art therapy sessions, and a shift in my clients’ engagement, and this experience is commonly shared in practice:

The way forward

Art therapy supervision is a many-layered topic, and this short overview does not attempt to address all its complex issues. Nonetheless, it outlines important aspects, including the strength and dynamism of art-based processes, as reflected in studies by UK and international art therapists.

Increasing work-based pressures can affect access to supervision, and the time needed for art-based processes, yet both are deeply needed to support good practice. As supervision is so important in these circumstances, it needs to be helpful and effective.

Art therapy supervisors need to ensure that they have the necessary skills and knowledge, particularly when addressing cultural and diversity issues, and systemic, organisational and power dynamics, and that they provide a clear framework. This is not a matter of “either art-based or framework-focused”; it needs to be both.