Manchester-born arts therapist Martin Gill had his first encounter with art as a form of "empowerment expression" when he went to visit his stepfather in prison: "He was a professional criminal who robbed banks and pubs. When I went to visit him, I saw artwork on the walls and one was very bleak: a winter scene with no vegetation. I felt deep regret for the man who had painted it."

Gill had to leave home at the age of 16 because of his stepfather's violence. After a period of homelessness, he became a community worker and ended up working in a Women's Aid refuge centre. He went on to study theatre at Manchester University.

Gill now runs a centre called Dryw Arts in Health in Anglesey, Wales, which includes a year-long training course called "Arts in Health". He also works as a consultant with state agencies in England and Wales. He is the facilitator of a large arts therapy conference to be held at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology on Saturday.

The conference is run by ArtsLinc, a partnership devised between Gill and Bryan Maguire, a psychologist who works at the Dun Laoghaire Institute as Head of Science.

ArtsLinc brings together a variety of arts specialists in Ireland and Wales. Several of the participants at the conference are from Northern Ireland, including Tom Magill, who has used Shakespeare in his conflict-resolution outreach work with prisoners in the Maze, and Patsy Devine, a community group worker from Derry.

Gill spent time in Delhi studying drama and movement therapy, and trained in innovative work with trauma survivors in the US. He says he could talk for hours about this "huge area". But what about the basics. Do arts therapies work? And if so, how?

"There is a small but growing body of work on the clinical effectiveness of arts therapies," he responds. "The irony is that the clinical evidence that doctors do you any good is also very sparse," he adds with a grin.

He is one of only six individuals in the UK who are trained drama therapists and psychodramatists. Drama therapy "helps someone to explore meaning through metaphor". Psychodrama, in the words of its founder, J.L. Moreno, is "a way to explore the truth without being punished". In both, "the ability or inability to play with a role is a measure of an ability to change. The desire to change is a prerequisite of therapy."

Gill trained with Therapeutic Spiral International (based in Charlottesville, Virginia) in a technique devised by clinical psychologist Kate Hudgins on healing the effects of trauma - from sexual abuse to earthquake survival: "Because of my own background of domestic violence, her work on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder interested me."

The approach involves building up, through psychodrama, a person's self-image as being strong and capable. Then, in a contained group setting, the person looks at the trauma again, with trained team members who take on any difficult roles that the trauma survivor might not want to re-experience. The emphasis, stresses Gill, is to stay in connection with their strength and "not to go under".

"The person can have their feelings, but from a place of clarity. Using Rudgins's approach, I have experienced a calmness around my own story that I never had before."

He is interested in using this approach with trauma survivors in Northern Ireland. He realises, however, that arts therapies may not be appropriate for everyone: "I tend to agree that there are certain places therapy should stay away from. The people may need empowerment more, where they can learn to be self-advocates."

He has devised a new team training method called the Community Action Empowerment Model: "This non-therapy approach enables the reworking of old patterns of abuse."

Does he ever get tired of all the angst and yearn to play his mandolin and sing all day instead? "The people I work with, we often have music or dance afterwards, to let it go and shake it off. It's a way of sharing both your wounded and your bright self. When people face their fear, they meet their courage and their creativity. That's where great art begins."

For information on Saturday's one-day ArtsLinc conference see www.artslinc.org, e-mail on conference2000@artslinc.org or contact 01-2144639