Certificate in Expressive Integrative Art

This is our most popular Expressive Integrative Art therapy course, aimed at counsellors and psychotherapists with creative interests in the arts. Basically, it gives you a thorough grounding in the theory and skills behind using visual arts with children, young people and adults. We also integrate creative intellectual evidence-based theory from counselling and arts therapy in a friendly, accessible and interactive way. Our aim is to help you develop the creative and career skills you need to use drawing, painting and clay in your practice.

You will learn how to introduce visual arts to your clients

Jill Carter has been teaching Expressive Art to counsellors for 15 years. In addition, her groups are always small (never more than 10 people) which provides a safe and nurturing environment. The Certificate is also accessible and affordable, as it is taught in five weekend modules over an academic year.

This is an experiential course, so you will be doing drawings and painting as part of your own creative process. Students will also be invited to share their personal drawings and paintings with the group. This allows us to begin to understand the unique and unexpected ways the unconscious guides our art. In addition, visual arts are an effective way to separate out what belongs to a client and what is ours. This is a key skill in supervision, which also protects us from vicarious or secondary trauma in our hands on work.

Expressive art forms are very effective when used with other creative arts therapies, so we will also use sandplay, mindfulness,  movement and music during this course.

Course Requirements

There is no written work on this course, although some reading and reflective exercises are set between the weekends. You are also encouraged to present a client to the group at some point. In addition, there will be regular group supervision sessions during the teaching weekends.

You can use the Certificate purely as a way of looking after yourself or as Continuing Professional Development. It is in fact suitable for BACP and UKCP CPD. However, if you would like the Certificate, we also need you to do 50 hours of client work that includes visual art. There is however no deadline to complete these hours. In fact, take as long as you need. In addition, we may be able to suggest suitably qualified supervisors and personal therapists to support you in your work.

The cost is £1680 if paid before the first module. After that, it is £1750 payable in instalments. In either case, a non-refundable deposit of £250 from the above amount is required at the time of booking. The next Certificate will be in Ealing in Autumn 2019. The dates therefore will be announced January 2019 –so, sign up to newsletter to get notified.

Many students who complete the Certificate go on to do the Diploma course, often with the same small group of students. In addition, there are also regular Webinars, podcasts and closed online groups as part of this growing, nourishing community.