Dr. Val Huet

About

Dr Val Huet (PhD) trained in sculpture at Camberwell School of Arts and qualified as an Art Therapist in 1986. She is a qualified Group Psychotherapist and trained at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust as an Organisational Consultant. Throughout her career, Val worked in mental health services with adults, and with children and adolescents. For several years, she managed a large arts therapies department within the National Health Service.  Her practice is now with professionals and teams using art-based approaches for work-related stress, having completed a PhD on this topic in 2015.  She co-founded the Art Therapy Practice Research Network. In 2003, Val was appointed the first Chief Executive Officer of the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT).  From October 2020 to August 2022, she was its Director of Research.  She lectures internationally and has published extensively. Her art practice focuses on life drawing and sculpture.  

Val believes passionately in the value of the arts therapies and arts for health and wellbeing, and in supporting access to these. She has a special interest in supporting people with a dual experience as art therapists and mental health service users.  In her work as an art therapist practitioner and researcher, as well as within the BAAT, she has advocated approaches integrating bio-psycho-socio-cultural issues to understand human distress.   An interest in the importance of the body/mind connection in all these processes has led her to set up a new project within Kings College Hospital where she is developing online art therapy groups for people living with chronic pain.