Julia Vering: How Expression and Fun Help Facilitate Healing

Season 5, Episode 2
​
Today’s Guest: Julia Vering, LSCSW, LCSW, REAT, is a performance artist and musician, licensed clinical social worker, and Registered Expressive Arts Therapist based in Kansas City. She has integrated the arts into social work for 20 years, centering her practice in joy, humor, imagination, and the strengths perspective. She has received grants from The Charlotte Street Foundation and Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts for her community-based performance work involving collaborations with older adults and people with neurocognitive disorders. She also tours and releases albums as “Unicorns in the Snow,” a performance art project that integrates interactive projections, stop-motion animation, and original music. 
​
Vering has worked in hospice and long-term care settings for the past 17 years. She opened her private practice, Expressive Arts Therapy KC, in 2022. She became the first Registered Expressive Arts Therapist in the state of Kansas in 2023 and serves as the Kansas State coordinator for the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association. Vering integrates expressive arts, psychodrama and EMDR into her practice, and is currently creating a workbook and film on performance art interventions for people with neurocognitive disorders. 
​
SHOW TOPICS

• Finding liberation and community through "weird" and "quirky" art forms
• The symbiotic relationship between art and therapy
• Facilitating healing and rehumanizing activities for patients and families in long-term care facilities through silliness and fun

Read More