Because truth is what works...wander our museum, pick an artefact and build your future, hour by hour...

The Solution Focused Museum stands at the heart of our approach. It has conceptual galleries where philosophy isn’t just theory, but curated collections of artefacts that breathe life into SF psychotherapy. Rooted in Dr Dean-David Holyoake’s 30+ years of lecturing and publishing the museum blends philosophical exploration with practice. Unlike traditional SF training, which often prioritises skills drills and rejects theory as a ‘hindrance’, our museum invites practitioners to wander through Stoicism, Pragmatism and Constructionism — the ‘DNA’ of SF — to build confidence hour by hour and explore how justification operates. Dean’s teaching journey, including his work with the MA Solution Focused Brief Therapy at the University of Birmingham and Anita’s novel research approach, have shaped this distinctive lens. Between them, they have supervised hundreds of postgraduate students, many of whom are currently successfully working as SF practitioners. Dean has presented at UK and international conferences, always emphasising SF’s reluctance to over-theorise. And Anita’s SF methodological innovation changes how we research the exciting and vibrant informal logic of everyday life.

Dean’s ethnographic research into “all things solution focused” led to groundbreaking books like Solution Focused Psychotherapy: 24 Philosophical Handouts Discussing Solution Focused Time and Truth, Justification & Solution Focused Psychotherapy: 28 Philosophical Artefacts from the Solution Focused Museum. These aren’t dry texts. They’re scrapbooks of sketches challenging the field’s “skills-only” focus by suggesting how philosophy applies SF psychotherapy. As Dean notes, SF distrusts elaborate theory, yet it’s steeped in maverick ideas from pioneers like Steve de Shazer and Bill O’Connell. The museum metaphor, inspired by classical Greek “seats of the Muses”, turns concepts into exhibit halls, where artefacts like “The Reluctant Historian” encourage visitors to patchwork their own SF practice.

What makes us different?

In a field often stuck in problem-saturated pasts or rote techniques, our museum privileges imagination through experiments and exceptions. Drawing from Dean’s books Acton Burnell’s Project and Weastern Lizard’s Solution Focused Exception Experiments, we treat SF as a “signifying performance” — a radical challenge to psychoanalytic depth, focusing on chronological hauntings and hauntological futures. Stories from Dean’s training sessions, like reimagining client “miracles” as philosophical dialogues, illustrate how time isn’t linear but a playground for exceptions. Practitioners don’t just learn skills, they curate conditions for suspending belief, the testing of ideas and fostering curiosity.

This approach, born from Dean’s hands-on teaching and bold publications (like rejecting “sensitivity readers” for raw, transgressive fiction), empowers therapists to innovate amid digital alienation. Wander our museum, pick an artefact and discover how SF philosophy isn’t a relic. It’s your key to believable tomorrows.