Courses
Year One
Expressive Arts Therapy: visual arts based
This course provides students with a first hand experience of Expressive Arts Therapy principles and practice, with attention to personal and group process. It begins with learning to work with visual arts to explore aspects of felt and lived experiences. The course then concentrates on working with the images that arrive by engaging directly with them by means of imagination. Naturally, students learn to move into exploring different art disciplines as well, such as creative writing and theater, with a focus on their interconnection. Humanistic phenomenological perspectives are explored.
Expressive Arts Therapy: movement based
This course is a continuation of the above course. It deepens and broadens understanding and appreciation of Expressive Arts Therapy theory and practice while providing opportunity for personal exploration. The course is inter-modal in nature and is based in working with movement and metaphors. It develops the skill to integrate creative expression, and the ability to move images and expressions between modalities. Intermodal and archetypal perspectives and methods are integrated.
Expressive Arts: Personality in Performance
This course in a concurrence with the above, utilizes principles and conventions of creation and performance to consciously explore and play within a psychological arena where our various perceptions of self and the world are developed. Participants learn to open up to, and engage and work with the different aspects of the personality through body work, creation of masks, theater, as well as by engaging with the playfully insightful honest expression of the Clown. The experiential nature of this course expands empathic and aesthetic sensitivity and increases our range and fluidity with intuitive expression.
Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy
This course delineates how Expressive Arts Therapy can be used to work with clients
suffering from trauma. The first part of the course focuses on defining trauma and the
antecedents and conditions for its occurrence. The second half describes how the
Expressive Arts Therapy can be used to both recognize and process traumatic material
and provide the necessary conditions for healing.
Therapeutic Themes - Populations
This course offers an examination of therapeutic themes and develops the skills required to identify therapeutic process and interventions necessary for addressing the needs of specific populations. Students explore development through ages and stages, and examine foundation topics such as: Family Systems, Cultural Systems, Mental Health, Loss, and Addictions. Students are required to conduct research in a chosen area and to present this to the class.
Practicum Preparation
This course prepares students for entrance into on-site practicum placements. Students
learn to introduce and present expressive arts therapy practice to various practicum
placements, and to set out and receive expectations and requirements. Ethical practice is
reviewed and students learn to track therapeutic work and therapist responses. Instructor
demonstration and feedback to student practice forms the basis of this course.
Year Two
Expressive Arts Therapy: drama and stories based
This course is a continuation of the above Expressive arts courses. It introduces participants through the enactment of myths, fairytales and personal stories, to the process of drama and storytelling as therapeutic forms. It develops skills in working with metaphor and symbol and teaches how choices made within the story structure reflect our lives; and the fears, obstacles, and traumas we need to overcome to heal.
Onsite Practicum
The on-site practicum offers hands-on experience in applying Expressive Arts Therapy in agencies and educational and community settings. Students are required to complete 300 practicum hours. Emphasis is placed on gaining clinical experience and on shaping an identity as an Expressive Arts Therapist capable of working collaboratively with other helping professionals. The practicum experience further develops therapeutic competence and lays a foundation for learning about community resources, for making professional connections and working collaboratively. The practicum runs in conjunction with the Practice and Supervision course.
Practice and Supervision
This course assists students to further their ability to apply practices and theory of Expressive Arts Therapy within a variety of settings. Case material and issues and questions arising from clinical practice are addressed and worked on, and relevant population groups will be reviewed. The course also covers elements of therapeutic practice such as: ethics, transference/counter-transference, self-awareness, working with resistance and crisis situations. Arts-based experiential activities are integrated to deepen understanding of Expressive Arts Therapy practice and to enhance skills.
Personality Theories and Implications
This course provides a foundation for understanding models of psychotherapy and
theories of personality. The course reviews development, structure, and functioning of
personality, with application to pathology, fostering change and well being. The focus is
on the three central approaches: the dynamic, behavioral–cognitive and existential-
humanistic. Expressive Arts Therapy principals are contextualised and examined in
relation to the theories reviewed.