What is Creative Arts Therapies?

Creative arts therapies include the many aesthetic and expressive media of visual art, drama, play, dance, music,poetry, etc. They share a belief in the potential of the creative processes to heal and transform the individual and society. Participation in the imaginative and creative process promotes physical, emotional and cognitive integration as well as enhancing self-awareness and facilitating growth.

Cyberspace offers a vast potential therapeutic space for the expression of such creativity and imagination for innovative therapists and counsellors.

Participation in this online workshop will provide a 'taster' of this therapeutic space to push the boundaries of the helping and healing professions.

"The world is but a canvas to the imagination" Henry David Thoreau

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination" Albert Einstein

What is an online learning group?

Workshop participants engage in an online learning community through a variety of online communication media overthe internet. It is anticipated that we will be using a Whiteboard (Groupboard - a private chatroom with simultaneous text, drawing/graphic/colour facilities) We will also be using email, msn messenger and discussion boards. In the week before the workshop begins, participants will be provided access to these facilities to familiarise themselves with them. Participants will be encouraged to communicate with each other using some of the medium above.

Opportunity will given to participants for group audio conferencing for those who have the necessary hardware/software during the workshop.

Pre-workshop help and support will made available to participants of the workshop during specific tutor facilitated sessions.

What equipment will I need?

You will need:

Minimum requirement: A computer connected to the internet with Messenger/Bit Wise chat software already loaded (MSN or Windows)

Optional: For those who wish to experience audio conferencing will require a sound card and a headphone with attached microphone. Team Talk would be needed to be installed. Broadband connection may be necessary.

Arts therapists, counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors or online helpers interested in exploring the use of the arts therapies medium in an online helping environment. It will interest those who may wish to work as an online therapist within their discipline or complement and integrate their existing face to face work with online work. It will appeal to researchers, therapists and counsellors, who would wish to consider the challenge of technology and the arts applied to human relationships in general and therapeutic relationships in particular.

The workshop will assume that participants will arrive with different levels of skills as well as available software andhardware. The minimal baseline level of skills, software and hardware required to be able to engage meaningfully may require participants to be confident and/or competent in the internet, word and graphic applications, email, chatrooms and discussion boards. During the workshop, you may be required to multi-task when moving between different areas of the internet – your email Inbox, the Bit Wise Whiteboard, your text screen - and your computer’s Word/Drawing software. Applications you are not actively working in could be minimised, leaving them open and available on your taskbar and your computer connected to the internet. Group audio conferencing will require you to keep the Team Talk application opened.

During the workshop participants may be asked to share pieces of image-making, writing with one other workshop member or within their learning group. We anticipate that this sharing is done professionally and that the participant with whom the personal material is shared treats it as they would treat any confidential information. Participants at any stage may wish to decide what and how much to share. It is accepted that workshop participants will respect each other’s decisions about the nature and amount of self-disclosure.
All disclosures of personal material whether offered as part of a paired exercise or during a group discussion will remain confidential to the workshop. A contract for the group will be circulated for everyone to agree at the start

When does it start?

The workshop is held in two sessions over one week end. Each Session starts at 2.00 pm and ends at 5.30 pm BritishSummer Time (BST)

Participants will received a workshop handbook providing details of access, pre-workshop support sessions, self-directed learning tasks, detailed workshop outline etc. once registration and payment has been confirmed.

How do I join this workshop?

You can complete and send your application online by clicking here
If you have a question email Alex Chew by clicking here