Jennie Kristel is a Registered Expressive Arts therapist and Accredited Playback Theatre trainer. She joined Lesley as an adjunct faculty member in 2016 and is a temporary core faculty member in the Expressive Arts Therapy Department. Jennie has a deep interest in teaching and training in the intersection of multicultural arts-based clinical work with social activism, narrative practices, and performance.
Prior to joining Lesley, she was an adjunct professor at Burlington College at the undergraduate and graduate levels, teaching multidisciplinary courses including survey courses in expressive arts therapies. She has had a clinical private practice since 1998 and uses expressive arts therapies to support individuals, couples, and families with issues of intergenerational trauma.
In 2005, she co-founded JourneyWorks with Dr. Michael Watson, a holistic mind-body psychotherapy counseling and training center.
Playback Theatre
Jennie is a Playback Theatre trainer. She has directed 2 Playback Theatre companies and uses Playback Theatre and applied theatre tools to support community building and conflict resolution in corporate organizations as well as mental health agencies.
Since 2003, Jennie has offered trauma-informed Playback Theatre and expressive arts therapy training in Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Kenya, and Hong Kong, working with non-government organizations and counseling centers that offer Training-the-Trainer programs, as well as training in expressive arts therapies in university clinical psychology departments. She also mentors and supervises Playback Theatre groups in India and Bangladesh.
She served on the board of Directors of the Centre for Playback Theatre and continues to work on the curriculum and leadership course committees.
Symposiums
Jennie helped develop, plan, and implement a daylong symposium on using the arts in therapies at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. This team also presented a two-day symposium, Create & Connect: Expressive Arts Therapy, at the University of Delhi and then in Auroville in South India. Jennie also collaborated with a team of Indian practitioners for a daylong business meeting to support Indian arts-based therapists in developing the Indian Association for Art Therapy.
Other Achievements
Along with her clinical work, Jennie co-founded an elementary school and has applied all she has learned in her clinical practice in integrating the arts in the curriculum, supporting homeschooling families with arts-based curricula, including whole language learning.
Jennie supervises expressive arts therapy students who are working toward their Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT) credential and is on the REAT review committee for the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association.