Arts Therapy differs from traditional art-making or performance in that the emphasis expands to include attention to the processes of creating and meaning-making. Arts Therapists work with individuals and groups by developing a therapeutic relationship with their client/s with clear boundaries, treatment plans, and outcomes to assist them in their healing. Within this therapeutic relationship, creative expression can have significant impact on the healing process for all people including those experiencing trauma, addictions, and psychological or emotional problems.

Whitecliffe Arts Therapy graduates combine their passion for creativity and for working with others to enhance well-being. They develop the confidence to contribute to this dynamic, emerging field of Creative Arts Therapy, harnessing their own experience and interests to pioneer new frontiers in this rapidly expanding profession.

 

Master of Arts in Creative Arts Therapy (Clinical) Course Outline

Creative Arts Therapy differs from traditional art-making or performance in that the emphasis expands to include attention to the processes of creating and meaning-making. Arts Therapists work with individuals and groups by developing a therapeutic relationship with their client/s with clear boundaries, treatment plans, and outcomes to assist them in their healing. Within this therapeutic relationship, creative expression can have significant impact on the healing process for all people including those experiencing trauma, addictions, and psychological or emotional problems.

Whitecliffe Creative Arts Therapy graduates combine their passion for creativity and for working with others to enhance well-being. They develop the confidence to contribute to this dynamic, emerging field of Creative Arts Therapy, harnessing their own experience and interests to pioneer new frontiers in this rapidly expanding profession.

 

Approach

The Whitecliffe programme offers a spectrum of approaches to Arts Therapy, stretching between two poles:

• ‘The arts as therapy’, follows the philosophy that participation in creative activities is universally beneficial, and that engagement with any of the arts at any level of proficiency, can have a healing effect.

• “The arts in therapy’, or arts psychotherapy, which involves using the arts within a psychotherapeutic relationship as a powerful mode of expression and agent of change.

Students will gain an understanding of how an Arts Therapist can work along this spectrum, taking into account the population they are working with as well as a range of other factors such as context, presenting problems, and appropriate arts modalities.

It is a highly innovative programme offering a variety of creative arts modalities. Applicants are expected to be comfortable or familiar with at least one of these when entering the programme, and to achieve a basic grounding in the other creative modalities during the programme. The programme supports students to develop culturally sensitive practices responsive to the M?ori worldview as well as other cultures.

 

Programme Overview

The Master of Arts in Creative Arts Therapy (Clinical) (MACAT) is a two-year, full-time programme that is currently offered in Auckland only. The seminar pattern involves six intensive seminars during the first year and four during the second year of study.

 

The Three Inter-related Elements of the MACAT Programme

Intensive weekend and four to five day seminars are held between four and six times annually to enable students to:

• Engage in theoretical and experiential learning with faculty, peers, and local and international practitioners

• Participate in group processes and self-reflexive practices

• Build clinical, research, and presentation skills