The Art of Trauma: Expressive arts with clients who have had traumatic experiences
This eight-week course is designed to support psychotherapists, social workers, front-line staff and other professionals who work with clients who have experienced trauma.
The course uses the basic principles and practice of intermodal expressive arts to guide participants in developing an approach that will help clients shape their relationship to their traumatic experience. Through experiential learning and art making, participants will discover how different artistic practices can help clients engage with their difficult stories. Professionals will also use the arts to explore their own counter-transference and find ways to hold their clients’ suffering.
Participants will learn to:
WINTER/SPRING SESSION: February - April (every Monday 5:30-8:30pm)
Registration Deadline: tba
The course uses the basic principles and practice of intermodal expressive arts to guide participants in developing an approach that will help clients shape their relationship to their traumatic experience. Through experiential learning and art making, participants will discover how different artistic practices can help clients engage with their difficult stories. Professionals will also use the arts to explore their own counter-transference and find ways to hold their clients’ suffering.
Participants will learn to:
- Identify a client’s reaction to a stressful event or memory through sensory-based activities.
- Reinforce a sense of safety by reconnection and self-soothing through art making.
- Use art making to unpack counter-transference to clients’ difficult stories.
- Understand the basic principles of expressive arts therapy and the way that play can ease a client’s experience of trauma.
- Achieve an understanding of how expressive arts can build strength and resilience for clients who have had traumatic experiences.
WINTER/SPRING SESSION: February - April (every Monday 5:30-8:30pm)
Registration Deadline: tba
