Art Therapy

Why choose this course?

• You want to study art therapy in a School of Creative Arts, to benefit from a creative, collaborative and energising environment
• You want to immerse yourself in making art, using the resources of the School of Creative Arts alongside our dedicated art therapy spaces
• You want to be taught by motivated and talented staff who care about your successes and your future clients
• You want to immerse yourself in sector relevant and inspiring course content
• You're looking for the opportunity to explore art therapy with all client groups and settings, to see which path best suits you
• Upon graduation, you want to become eligible to apply for registration with the HCPC. 

What will I study?

You'll master core skills to deliver art therapy to clients of all ages, in all settings. We'll teach you theories of creativity and the arts from a neuroscientific, psychological and evolutionary perspective. You'll gain an understanding of the issues of culture, race, gender, sexuality, class and disability. You'll use this knowledge to create equality of opportunity in your practice. Together we'll explore intersectionality and privilege. We'll teach you strong clinical reasoning, evaluation and decision-making skills. You'll learn the ethical, legal and organisational context to therapeutic practice, becoming confident to manage risk. You'll discover how to tailor interventions to help service users with complex needs. You'll become a confident researcher, developing evidence-based practice, as you employ the arts to improve wellbeing. We'll assess you through a mix of written, oral and visual assignments.

Through clinical placements in a range of acute and community mental health services, you'll observe how to maintain safe and helpful relationships with service users. You'll learn the skills needed for effective multi-disciplinary teamwork. You'll become an excellent communicator, using verbal and non-verbal techniques with clients. During your placements, your fitness to practice will be nurtured, developed and assessed.

About the course

Join a vocational course, comprising of campus and placement-based learning. We'll teach you through a combination of lectures, seminars and workshops, to bring together theory and practice. We offer a stimulating learning environment, teaching through role play, visual art practice, peer participation and experiential group work.

You'll complete 96 days of supervised placement learning to give you valuable experience in practicing art therapy in real-life settings. This experience will help guide you to become a mindful, relational and ethical art therapist.

Every step of the way, we'll encourage you to be an active learner. To be creative. Art making lies at the heart of this course, so you'll have lots of opportunities to develop strong practical skills. Plus, you'll reflect on how to use your own art making as therapy practice.

Outside of the course, we'll require you to explore your own therapeutic journey. To engage with personal therapy to gain self-awareness and to see the approaches used to facilitate honesty of expression. 

The course is offered on a full-time (2 years) and part-time (4 years) basis. With students on each pathway studying together. Both pathways are equally weighted in terms of practice-based and campus-based learning.

We welcome creative and psychologically minded students from a wide range of cultural, ethnic and social backgrounds.