Zenon Bankowski

Trustee

Zenon Bańkowski is a Pole who was born in 1946 in Germany. Bought up in England, he studied in Scotland at universities in Dundee and Glasgow. He has worked in Cardiff and Edinburgh and is Emeritus Professor of Legal Theory at Edinburgh University. He lives in Edinburgh.  He is concerned with the ethical life of institutions. As such he is interested in emotions and law and the embodiment of our knowledge in general.  Especially so in the place of the visual and movement arts in relation to Law and Legal Education and the formation of the ethical imagination.  He has taken part in dance workshops, was a competitive athlete (a past winner of the Edinburgh 7 Hills race) and has been a volunteer neighbourhood mediator.

Dawn Wilson

Trustee

Dawn has a background in science, the arts and social work practice/management and organisational change.

She completed her Diploma in Gestalt Therapy at Edinburgh Gestalt Institute(EGI) in 2009. From then she worked as Student Counsellor at Edinburgh University and as a Therapist with children in the field of trauma/sexual abuse. She currently works in private practice with adults and children/young people. She completed her accreditation as a Gestalt Psychotherapist with the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP registered) in 2017. She offers Supervision to staff working in an Arts based therapy project, supervises trainees at EGI and co-facilitates a Fortnightly Therapy group at EGI.

She has an interest in the development and promotion of Gestalt Therapy within Scotland and the wider field. She has an interest in the creativity and attendance to difference that is key within Gestalt Therapy practice. Becoming a trustee at EGI has come from a sense of trying to ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ and putting into action the development her interests.

Craig McDevitt

Trustee

I was born in 1949 and educated in Dunfermline.  I studied History at St Andrews and graduated with honours in 1971.  Against my better judgement, I went on to study for a post graduate certificate in Education at Dundee College of Education and then teach for a year during which time I realised that formal teaching of young people really was not my vocation.  I taught English as a foreign language for a number of years but at the beginning of my 30’s I realised that my real skill and interest was in education of a different sort i.e. working with young people’s psychological and emotional difficulties.

I trained at Birbeck College, University of London and specialised in working with people going through the late-adolescence/early adulthood transition.  On my return to Edinburgh, I began working at the Student Counselling Service at The University of Edinburgh and ultimately became the Director of the service thus combining clinical practice with management of the service.  This was my core career for 25 years.

Throughout my professional life I have been actively involved in my professional body, The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.  The 80’s were an interesting and exciting time when the ground work was being done in terms of establishing ethical codes of conduct, training standards, regular supervision, accreditation and regulation of the field in general.  I became Chair of BACP just at the point when the Government began to be serious in their intent to initiate statutory regulation making my tenure very much a roller coaster ride as passions on this subject ran very high in the field.

Although I have never worked as a trainer of therapists, I was external examiner for a number of years for The University of Oxford’s Masters in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy.  It was quite a challenge at times trying to clarify for Oxford dons why normal academic criteria are not always compatible with the assessment of therapists in training.

The final part of my career was working with The Centre of Therapy in Glasgow where I had a role in observing students and staff participating in their two-year diploma level training in CBT.   Now, I am happily retired and content to be a trustee of EGI.

Andrew Pritchard

Trustee (Chair)

Andrew is a gestalt therapist and lecturer working in Edinburgh. He has a private therapy practice as well as working for a counselling agency in the city. He also teaches on an integrative counselling course at Edinburgh College. He also has an interest in the field of personal development, working with dialogue and reflective practice.

Andrew trained with the Gestalt Trust in Scotland, qualifying in 2001. He has an interest in how gestalt therapy’s integration of a holistic perspective with precise attention to detail can help to inform the wider, and rapidly evolving, field of popular psychological interest that is emerging at the moment.