I have run many trainings for different organisations. They include ‘Art-making as a Useful Approach’ for health professionals; ‘Art for Stress-release and Self-regulation’ for Corporate clients; ‘Art Stimulates Creativity’ for organisations; ‘Group Art Process’ for Team Building; ‘Using Art in therapy’ for psychotherapists and more. Every workshop is tailored towards the needs of the organisation as well as the client group they are working with.
Art therapy training is a two or three year Masters degree and clearly any training days/weeks are not an art therapy training per se. However many counsellors and therapists are seeing the benefits of image-making with clients and would like some guidelines about the practice. Other allied health professionals would like to add to their therapeutic tool kits and want to learn basic principles.
Hence art therapy history, making images, learning about symbolism and interpretation, improving visual literacy, developing versatility and confidence with a variety of art materials can all be part of the training mix. As a trained educator I enjoy creating an art therapy training programmes for personal and professional development.
In 2006 I was invited by Dr. Panos Asimakis to run a 5-day training for the Synthesis Psychotherapy Training School in Greece. What I found particularly interesting was working with and through a translator. As a picture can say a thousand words, the translator also has to convey a sense of the unspoken, while being accurate as to what is being expressed in words. This happens through timing, intonation, sensitivity and care, which Yianna the translator excelled in.
There were a couple of participants who were so facially expressive that I imagined I understood everything that was said prior to Yianna’s translation, and there were those who were nervous about speaking in any language…