VFTS 2025-2 | Mimi Savage | Personal Public Service Announcement (TM): an arts based approach for research

FEATURED GUESTS: Dr. Mimi Savage is an associate professor and core faculty member in the Master's of Counseling Psychology with Expressive Arts program at CIIS in SF. She has an extensive background in acute milieus and has researched adopted young women and boys from foster care using narrative inquiry, arts based and participatory research on the topic of intersectionality and self identity. She is a founding faculty member of UCLArts and Healing in Los Angeles--now called Integrative Arts and Healing Initiative.

She is a registered drama therapist and board certified trainer and mentors an international student body for professionals interested in drama therapy certification at her own school--So Cal Drama Therapy Center. She is now also core faculty for a new program she is helping to launch at CIIS which is Expressive Arts Coaching and Community Building. She is in the process of editing her book for Taylor & Francis/Routledge due next year called The Future of Black Creative Art Therapists: Practice, Pedagogy and Preservation.

LISTEN & LEARN:

• What is narrative inquiry?
• What is the Personal Public Services Announcement™ (PPSA) method? 
• The importance of identity work when engaging with adolescents. 
• The value of contributing to the field through the use of writing. 
• How to use the PPSA as a tool in participatory arts-based research. 
• Mimi's upcoming book, "The Future of Black Creative Arts Therapists: Pedagogy and Preservation," due in 2026 by Taylor & Francis/Routledge. 

RESOURCES MENTIONED ON THE SHOW:

• Mimi's Session at the Midwest Expressive Therapies Summit - Re-Storying Self-Identity Through Drama, Writing & Masks: Creating Personal Public Service Announcements ™ on May 3, 2025 from 10:00 AM-5:30 PMCT

In this day-long three-part master class, participants will have the opportunity to learn the Personal Public Service Announcement™ (PPSA) method, an arts-based approach that was originally developed to generate narrative data using drama therapy techniques with adopted young women in foster care. To introduce this novel format, past peer-reviewed research will be discussed from the empirical-based inquiry. For the majority of our time together, however, participants will be invited to work collaboratively and in embodied ways to create their own PPSAs using a number of expressive arts tools, including creative writing, digital apps, and mask-making. In particular, participants will discover the theory, processes, and outcome of this restorative way of doing participatory research within narrative inquiry. Synthesizing personal explorations to enhance emotional or clinical development — then creatively reconstructing that information and affect into PPSAs with the intent to re-story and restore self-identity while being witnessed — can be very effective in treatment, as well.

PLEASE NOTE: Participants' knowledge of qualitative research tenets and methods will be beneficial. The ability to access your narratives without concern about retraumatization will be key to maintaining safety in this session. 

• The Future of Black Creative Art Therapists: Practice, Pedagogy and Preservation will be available for preorder on https://www.routledge.com/ April 2026. 
• Mimi Savage, PhD, RDT, BCT contact msavage@ciis.edu
• Mimi's SoCaldramatherapycenter http://www.socaldramatherapycenter.com/
• Mimi's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mimi-savage-phd-rdt-bct-b0179931/



• Need support in creating your practice Email me for a consult: creativeclinician@gmail.com