We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julia Vering. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julia below.

Julia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

I started working as an “activities assistance” at a nursing facility shortly after graduating with my bachelors in liberal arts with emphasis in social work, experimental animation and music in 2003. After noticing that Pictionary did little to engage residents, I decided to experiment with “Let’s make a movie!” night instead. I brought an old camcorder, some wigs and simple improvisational scenarios and the TV on the rolling cart for viewing. I was completely floored once I started giving residents scenarios to improvise, and noted that even residents with advanced dementia were able to communicate better than previously demonstrated, fully engage with appropriate affect and display creativity and humor. Even a resident who entered the group very agitated, easily stepped into the role of “movie director” with great confidence. After filming a few scenes, we watched the unedited “Movie” together immediately. The residents indicated they were very impressed with the movie we made, which was the talk of the facility when I cam back the next day. Although this activity was quickly shut down by administration citing concern with video use, this moment forged my path towards finding new ways to use drama and video for healing. I am currently making a short film on the expressive arts therapy groups I facilitate in nursing facilities, based on vintage musicals and movies, spurned by these early experiences.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I studied social work, experimental animation and electronic music at the Evergreen State College, eager to forget a career that married the disciplines of artist and social worker. Inspired by the early performance work of Miranda July and operatic collaborations of Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson, I began integrating personal narratives into meta-story performances. I discovered her love for gerontology through volunteer work at the local senior center, recording oral histories of patrons to set to music and incorporate into performances. I formed an all female conceptual art band, Muñeca Chueca, who performed in clothing purchased at the senior center, and created stop motion animation videos of ourselves in wheelchairs and hospital beds from the junkyard. Unicorns in the Snow was born in 2002 as a solo project featuring live music that coincided with her animation video of a headless figure mulling around my apartment with ceramic unicorns and fake snow.

After graduating with a B.A. in liberal arts in 2003, I started working in activities at a nursing home, where she sought to engage residents in meaningful ways. I began experimenting with video-based drama therapy techniques, and noticed that residents with dementia had decreased agitation, increased spontaneous communication and enjoyed themselves while participating. Residents loved watching themselves in the “movies” produced. I organized talent shows and produced training videos starring nursing home residents, allowing opportunities for residents to share their strengths with staff and families.

I took graduate classes in gerontology and completed her Masters in Social work with emphasis on aging at the University of Kansas in 2008. I became a social worker in a long-term care facility. I channeled my frustrations of working within the medical industrial complex to satirical performance piece, Essentially You, featuring mannequin therapy conducted by a personal shopper with a fact-checking projector.

The social work strengths perspective, emphasizing clients’ talents and skills, informs my process. While employed at Kansas City Presbyterian Manor, I received a Rocket Grant to produce You Live Here Too, a multimedia performance utilizing video, stop-motion animation, an original score, and local senior citizens as actors and oral historians. To highlight the unique abilities of each person, I adapted techniques for memory impairments through the use of fill-in-the-blank cue cards, which engaged participants in life review (e.g. “something I’ll never forget is_____.”)

The Rocket Grant led Vering to a drama therapy position at Jeanne’s Place, a social engagement program for people with dementia. Utilizing green screen technology, drama participants reenact classic TV shows, movies and musicals, which are then screened at the following session. These collective screenings allow memory-impaired participants to re-experience the joy in creating the videos, transcending disability, filling the room with radical laughter.

I has worked in hospice since 2012 and earned my Clinical Social Work licensure in 2019. I received Charlotte Street funding to create and perform The Understudy, an experimental multimedia performance piece featuring adults with early stage dementia as narrators, dancers, and actors via duo video projections. I performed the piece in conjunction with a screening of her drama therapy work and the work of artist Anna Azizzy. The show, Mirror Me, Mirrored You, brought together the actors, their families, healthcare workers, people with disabilities and the queer community into a celebration of resilience.

In 2020, I received Charlotte Street “Art Where You’re At” funding to perform Re-Enactments, a multimedia performance art piece featuring adults with dementia as actors. I worked with the actors to come up with moments from their lives that could be “re-enacted”-such as someone doing the dance to “footloose” on their daughter’s bed to cheer them up. The piece was performed in a storage shed behind Life Care Center nursing facility in Kansas City, KS for the residents, at a “drive in” in a church parking lot in Leawood, KS for the adults with dementia whom I collaborated with and their families, and at Our Home Senior Care, a small memory care facility in Shawnee, KS. I began training in expressive arts including drama therapy, psychodrama through the Center for Creative Arts Therapy and other centers in 2021.

I opened my own private practice, Expressive Arts Therapy KC LLC in 2022 which provides individual integrative psychotherapy in person in Prairie Village, KS, expressive arts groups at nursing facilities and in-home expressive arts therapy for pediatric palliative care patients on behalf of Kansas City Hospice and Palliative Care. I integrate EMDR, parts work, expressive arts, psychodrama, video and sound into my work with clients. I continue to seek new methods for telling and evoking stories, using video as a therapeutic tool for creating and re-experiencing joy despite trauma and memory loss. I became the first Registered Expressive Arts Therapist in the state of Kansas and KC Metro area in 2023 and am the Kansas state coordinator for the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

My success in the world of creative psychotherapists is owed much to building a support network of other creative healers and artists and receiving creative psychotherapy myself as a client. I facilitate two monthly groups with other creative therapists and healers, and love to take any opportunity I get to create community with other practitioners in this small but growing field. Beyond coursework, practice and formal supervision, I have found receiving psychodrama, art therapy and EMDR as a client is an essential piece of self care that provides the foundation I need to be a great, creative clinician.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn that social workers are “good for nothing.” When I graduated with my masters in social work from the University of Kansas, Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver gave the commencement with the theme that social workers are “good for nothing” due to our relatively low pay for the education and training required. Although I understood I was going into a low paying profession, I made many mistakes along the way in taking unnecessary pay cuts and allowing my wage to stagnate for 15 years before realizing I did have the power to demand more. Making the decision to move from full time employee to self-employed allowed me to increase my income by 50% in my first year while crafting a practice that met my needs to be creative and independent.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://expressiveartstherapykc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unicorns_inthesnow/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JuliaVeringCreative/
• Youtube: https://unicornsinthesnow.com/performance-art-videos/
• Other: https://unicornsinthesnow.com/