Meet The Experts
Tasha Conn
Tasha Conn is an Accredited Play Therapist (MA), Play and Creative Arts Therapies Clinical Supervisor, trainer and course director. Through her work with The Therapeutic Rainbow, she supports children, families, schools and fellow practitioners using a warm, creative and relationship-based approach. Tasha is passionate about looking beyond behaviour to understand the child underneath, and about the ways play can offer a language when words feel difficult or are not yet available. She is currently developing a book exploring the therapeutic use of puppets, bringing together her clinical experience and her lifelong fascination with how puppets can connect, communicate and come alive.
For the retreat, Tasha plans to offer a playful and experiential workshop exploring both how we bring a puppet to life and what becomes possible when we do. Through gentle, accessible activities, participants will experiment with movement, voice, character and relationship, discovering that meaningful puppet work is less about performance or technical skill and more about curiosity, presence and connection.
The workshop will also consider how puppets can provide a safe distance from difficult feelings, becoming a voice, shield, secret-holder or playful companion. Participants will be invited to notice what a puppet might express that feels harder to say directly, and how this can support communication, spontaneity and the emergence of hidden or less-heard parts of ourselves. No puppetry experience is needed just a willingness to play, wonder and see what unfolds.
Vicky Hall
Vicky Hall is the founder of Rainbow Flow, where movement, imagination and storytelling come together to support children’s emotional wellbeing. After leaving a career in fashion and retail, Vicky followed a much more colourful path into children’s yoga, creative movement and play therapy. She now works with children in schools and community settings, as well as delivering inclusive movement sessions for adults with learning disabilities. Vicky’s work is playful, embodied and wonderfully prop-filled, often involving music, scarves, sensory elements and stories.
The Body Remembers How to Play
Vicky will lead a playful and experiential workshop during the retreat, inviting participants to step away from their thinking minds and rediscover the expressive possibilities of the body. Through gentle movement, imaginative journeys, music and creative play, we will explore how movement can support regulation, connection, self-expression and emotional release - both for the children we work with and for ourselves as practitioners.
Throughout the workshop, there will be opportunities to move, play, create and reflect, drawing on Vicky’s experience in children’s yoga, creative movement and play therapy. No flexibility, coordination or previous yoga experience is required; this is an invitation to be curious rather than polished. Participants can join in at their own level, notice what emerges and perhaps reconnect with the part of themselves that already knows how to play. Expect plenty of colour, joy and laughter along the way!
Becky Blackwell
Becky Blackwell is an accredited Play Therapist and Clinical Supervisor based in Morayshire. Her play therapy space is in Lossiemouth and the beach is her happy place, so she loves welcoming clients to her play room by the sea. Becky is a military spouse, so adapting to moving locations has become her superpower. She has four children of her own, so she’s also pretty used to a baseline of chaos!
Slime & Messy Play Workshop
Becky says, “I have a high tolerance for mess, and in my play therapy room I love giving children the space to explore and process through mess. There is something about holding that space for children to dive into slime, paint, clay, water… and sometimes a magical alchemical mix of all of these things. In my workshop, we will come to a place of acceptance and surrender to the thoughts and feelings that messy play can take us to. Which parts of us are awakened? We will explore playfully, experiment together and work with our inner child. Our senses will be celebrated, barriers faced and, perhaps, a little alchemy realised. This is an opportunity to get messy, get curious and explore what happens when we let go, find acceptance and presence in creative transitional state”.