Events

This immersive training series invites practitioners into a playful, reflective, and deeply relational space where systemic ideas come alive in dialogue. Led by Professor Hannah Sherbersky, each session explores the patterns that shape our work and homelives — the spoken and unspoken, the visible and the subtle — and offers opportunities to experiment, collaborate, and co-create new possibilities. At a time of climate crises and polarized thinking, and whether you’re a therapist, supervisor, system-oriented practitioner, or just a curious deep thinker, this series offers a rich blend of theory, experiential learning, and creative dialogue. Together with professionals working across a range of arts, health and science contexts, and drawing on the work of Nora Bateson, Dave Snowdon and others, we trace spirals of meaning, notice constellations of connection, and cultivate the capacity to work with complexity in ways that are grounded and ethical.

Collaborators include national and international family and systemic psychotherapists, as well as psychologists and therapists from other disciplines such as dramatherapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and play therapy. They also include colleagues working in specialist areas such as gender and sexual diversity, perinatal care, spirituality, mindfulness, foster care, decolonising literature and folklore, participation and co-production, couple therapy, ecology, intercultural work, community-focussed research around food systems, activism and social justice, as well as radical approaches to mental health research, and the intersections of clowning and politics. They include those working in a wider systemic community; those in business, community development, local politics, post-colonial literature and poetry and even a colleague from the Nomadic Rebel Clown Academy! Our shared endeavour is to explore the emergent patterns of communication and interaction within our communities, and to invite deep thinking and listening to the systemic stories we share.

First series of collaborators (and there will be more!): Dr Lorna Hobbs, Maimunah Mosli Baffour Ababio, Professor Claire Pettinger, Dr Reenee Singh, Martin Gill, Fajar Saban, Robyn Hambrook, Mark Rivett, Di Gammage, Kate Groucutt, Olivia Doherty, Roderick Peake, Jo Hogan, Professor Emily Zobel Marshall, Dr Julia Wahl. More details about the collaborator profiles to follow.

What you’ll gain:

• A deepened understanding of systemic theory and relational frameworks
• Practical tools for working with complexity and uncertainty
• Enhanced confidence in co-creating change through dialogue and experimentation
• Creative integration of systemic ideas into your practice

Who can attend:

• Curious thinkers
• Relationship therapists
• Family and Systemic psychotherapists
• Mental health practitioners
• Supervisors and trainers
• Other professionals seeking relational depth

Practical details:

• Dates & Location: Online. The second Tuesday of every month – starting 14^th April 2026. Moving towards fortnightly in due course.
• Cost & Registration: From £27.80
• Contact and ticket: Eventbrite – see link.

In the first workshop, Hannah will set the scene, provide some basic understanding of systems thinking, and start to explore how we can shift paradigms. This opening session invites us to step into the spiral together — to arrive, to orient, and to begin noticing the patterns that shape our work. We will explore the foundations of systemic theory and family therapy practice, not as abstract ideas, but as living, breathing ways of seeing and relating.

During the session together, we will trace the roots of systemic thinking: how families organise themselves, how patterns emerge and repeat, and how meaning is co-created in relationships. We will consider the shift from linear explanations to circular ones, from “what is wrong?” to “what is happening between us?”, and from individual stories to relational ones.

This session offers a grounding introduction for those new to systemic practice, a reflective re-entry point for those returning to these ideas with fresh eyes and an opportunity to start cultivating our new community of practice. Each of the following sessions will stand alone but will also be an opportunity to start growing our community. Following this first workshop in April, other collaborators will join Hannah on a journey together and dates and further information will follow. Certificates of attendance are available on request.

Psychosexual and Relationship Therapy Training

Explore Couple Therapy for Depression (CTfD) and the Exeter Model, integrating strategies for addressing sex and intimacy in relational contexts to enhance therapeutic outcomes with Professor Hannah Sherbersky.