Make it Happen with Andrea Watts - Using collages to help you get unstuck

Ali Meehan of costawomen.com chats to Andrea Watts of UnGlue You
Andrea's purpose is to see you overcome challenges and fulfil your potential. To achieve this you will need one or all of the following: increased self-awareness, motivation and behaviour change. Not an easy journey. But by sharing her knowledge and experience of using images to raise self-awareness and influence behaviour, she can help. Delivered as ‘collage for visual learning and self-development’ workshops Andrea has created a powerful, creative and engaging tool.
Connect with Andrea through her website http://unglueyou.co.uk/

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1. How did your professional journey begin?

Seven years ago in 2012 I felt stuck in a job I no longer enjoyed. Firstly, I had no opportunity to express myself creatively. Secondly, as a senior manager I wasn't working in direct contact with the client group the organisation supported. I knew this was important to me.
So, I went to see a careers coach who did a guided visualisation with me. When it finished, she suggested I draw doors opening, because I mentioned it a lot. I did, but the stick figures really didn’trepresent what I was trying to say. So, I created a collage instead as this had always been my favourite medium as an artist. As I went through the process I came across an image of a girl under a blanket. When I saw it I felt really upset. The image really resonated with me as I thought that's how I feel - hidden, restricted, unable to express myself. Like my potential was being stifled and suffocated as I wasn't being true to myself. I’d known I wasn’t happy, but I had no idea just how unhappy I was.

Then I saw an image of a girl stretching up, so I positioned her as though she was taking off the blanket. She represents me saying it's time to come out now. I made the decision that I was not prepared to keep feeling that way and basically the collage motivated me to leave and start my business.

I didn’t choose to use collaging as a coaching tool in my business simply because I’d created the collage. It was a culmination of past experiences, training and my passion to use art to help others all coming together.
In 2006 I’d completed an Art Therapy foundation course. Although by the end of the foundation yearI realised I didn’t want to be an Art Therapist. It was there I learnt about the power of images to express yourself and tap the unconscious. Importantly we were taught that it was all about the process, not what the final piece looked like.

Also since 2009 I’d facilitated a collage workshop with bereaved carers as part of a 12 week course. The course runs once a year. But every year they asked a carer from the previous year to come back and share their story about their journey through grief; so others can see it gets easier with time. Every year without being asked carers have come back with their collage. So by 2012 I knew there was something powerful in it. They continue to bring their collages back to share their story.

Combining these with my own experience of creating a collage, while in a period of transition, ultimately led me to starting UnglueYou.

2. What were your roadblocks? How did you deal with them?

The biggest roadblock was, and in many ways, remains that many people don’t understand thepower of images as a self-development tool. Although some of my audience are aware of visionboards, what I offer isn’t the same and so I’ve carried out lots of research myself, alongside research by MSc psychology students, to demonstrate how and why it works. The students have

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