Search our website. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, get in touch at: hello@wearebluecabin.com.
Supervision is a relationship-based education (Milne, 2009) between a practitioner and a supervisor, which aims to enable practitioners to develop ‘superior vision’ – literally, to see themselves and their practice more clearly.
In the context of Blue Cabin, it’s a safe, confidential space, with a qualified supervisor, for our team members to reflect on their work with care experienced people.
Supervision is facilitated by Blue Cabin’s two therapeutic supervisors, Matt Stalker and Louise Wicks. Matt Stalker has written a blog post, sharing definitions of supervision, and an introduction to its use in creative practice.
Blue Cabin offers paid therapeutic supervision for all its associate artists and core team members. It’s part of how we support the wellbeing of our team, and can be especially important when people are delivering work which involves potentially difficult themes, conversations and feelings.
As Louise Wicks, one of Blue Cabin’s therapeutic supervisors, says:
“Empathy and compassion don’t flow from a bottomless well. Anyone who works in a setting where there is repeated exposure to emotionally intense settings knows that it can come at an emotional and personal cost. Supervision, or reflective sessions, have the positive purpose of encouraging, supporting, developing and caring for people.”
Jenny Young, Blue Cabin director, adds:
“The work that our team delivers can be emotionally intensive and we recognise our responsibility to create the conditions in which people can do this work safely, thoughtfully and sustainably. Everything we do is underpinned by trauma-informed principles reflected in our One Small Thing Bronze accreditation.
“We see this as part of being a responsible and caring employer, and as an investment in the sustainability and quality of our work. Supporting people’s wellbeing helps them to remain engaged in their work, continue developing their practice and bring care, creativity and thoughtfulness to the relationships at the heart of Blue Cabin.”
The format for Blue Cabin supervision sessions is as follows:
Sessions loosely follow a simple cycle:
1. The team member identifies a recent experience in their Blue Cabin practice to reflect on.
2. They consider what they need from supervision on the issue (e.g. figure something out, emotional processing, making a plan to do something differently).
3. The team member and supervisor reflect on and make sense of it together, and make a plan – what would the person repeat because it worked and what might they do differently?
“For me, therapeutic supervision…wasn’t just about reflection on ‘did that exercise work’. I could look holistically at ‘did that work for me as a human?’, ‘did it work for them as a human?’ and what do I still feel that I’m holding? It’s like my heart gets put in a box, looked after for a bit, then handed back to me for my next bit of work.” Lisette Auton, Blue Cabin associate artist.
“When we’re facilitating safe spaces for care experienced children and young people, sometimes what we’re doing holds a lot of weight for the children and their carers but also for us as well, because we’re holding their stories and we want to hold them as safely as possible…And sometimes that feels really big. So it’s having a place and space where we can come together with somebody who can help us to understand what happened in a moment, to reflect on what happened, and also think about if that happened again, what we might do.” Elena Miller, Blue Cabin associate artist.
You can read more about Elena’s experience of supervision here>>
Watch
Read
