I'm

Daniel Xavier Fleming is an independent counselor, Expressive Arts Coach, researcher and educator, based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Currently working on a research project about the role of the unconscious in arts therapy. Since completing his PhD in Scotland in 1985, Daniel has worked in community arts and taught, researched, and developed arts curricula at universities in Scotland, Ireland, Brazil, Japan, China, and Australasia. He has done postdoctoral work in the USA, held a personal chair in Cultural Studies at Ulster University in the UK (where he received a Distinguished Teaching Award) and a professorship in the School of Arts at Waikato University in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Daniel has authored or edited five books (as Dan Fleming), published in numerous journals, and been an editor at The Art Story online. Prior to his career pivot* in 2017, via a 3-year Clinical Masters in Arts Therapy, Daniel's wide-ranging 30-year experience in the field of Visual Culture Studies reflected his passion for how the act of seeing, especially through modern art, film, and participatory intermodal expressive arts, can enrich our understandings of self and our constructions of the social world.


*Career strategist Jenny Blake defines a career pivot as 'doubling down on what is working to make a purposeful shift in a new, related direction.' Having done it himself, Daniel helps others do it too, usually by engaging the arts to show the way.

BA(Hons) 1st class, Education & English Literature
PhD (Communications, Media & Culture)
Grad Dip, distinction (Advanced Career Guidance)
MA(Clinical) 1st class, Arts Therapy

Some examples of art from the creative journals kept during this period are included under the 'MA' category in the portfolio (see menu). During the 3-year clinical training, I designed an adaptable 'mind set' (below) as an experimental way to stage scenes that dramatized psychotherapeutic concepts. These stagings were then spun-off into creative writing and art-making, in ways that articulated with client work on clinical work placements and in private practice. This is an example of a technique to deepen and focus my own active imagination, on the therapist's side of the therapeutic alliance. Ongoing creative journaling is another related technique.

- online resources and personal coaching, including Daniel's unique voXArt Studio Days®, launching in 2022