Last week I was at an amazing concert by Rhiannon Giddens, at the Royal Festival Hall, at the Southbank Center as part of the #wearejazz EFG London Jazz Festival . Rhiannon brings together musical influences from Africa, America and Europe to create a sound which is captivating. Rhiannon has researched the history of the musical styles which influence her; she
As a dramatherapist I am an Allied Health Professional (AHP): This mean I am one of a collection of 14 occupations representing the third largest clinical workforce in health and social care in England (after “medical and dental” and “nursing and midwifery”) and the third largest group employed by the NHS. The 14 AHP occupations are: Art therapists (for mental
Four graduates from each of the UK Dramatherapy Masters degree programmes talk about their training experience. Compare the courses and find out more.
As it is currently the first ever International Dramatherapy Week I thought I would do some, back to basics, blogging and look at what dramatherapy is. Dramatherapy is the use of drama with a healing intent. But what is it? Drama means Action or To Do. The word drama can be understood in two ways: an exaggerated version of reality-
This week I attended another London Embodiment Circle, a meet up for different styles of body based professionals which includes people who practice yoga, marshal arts, somatic experiencing and dance. This months theme was on Contact Improvisations. The session was led by Jan Lee who teaches contact improviastion and movement presence. Jan says: “I am a dancer, musician and somatic
Some types of pain and suffering are unique to each person I meet. Others are shared. Grief is something which affects everyone at some point (probably multiple points) in our lives. This year I had my own experience of grief. I cycled through my own stages of grief and mourning (Kübler-Ross, 1969); the anger, the despair, the fear for what
The final workshop I attended at the Dramatherapy Conference last month was on Khulisa’s approach to working with schools and prisons. I was really excited about this workshop; I had the privileged to support Khulisa’s work in 2015 and saw the transformative impact their Face It programme had in a school. At the time I was training in Person-centered talk
There was an art exhibit called Day 1 at this years dramatherapy conference by Amit Sharma which had been exhibited as part of Mental Health Awareness Week (May) with Shadow Road and OSO Arts Centre. The piece explored a way to use art within supervision within the field of mental health. I was particularly drawn to the wire sculpture. The
I had an early morning activity on Saturday morning at the BADth Conference, stating even before breakfast was served. I don’t mind an early start but it is rare that I do anything much before breakfast. Here is what the programme said to tempt me to book this activity. “During December 2018–January 2019 I volunteered at Camp Moria Lesvos, Greece.
There were four choices for performances we could attend on the Friday night of the BADth Conference. I had been attracted to this one as I was interested in how pre-verbal trauma could be worked with. We had been told in the blurb that: “Often the events that shape us happen to us before we even have the language to