work experience needed for art therapy

I am wanting to do a master in art therapy but i need to do 1500 hours of work experience face to face work with clients. it could be adult elderly or child mental health, special needs or social services, in a hospice or a prison. Anybody know where to seek this experience and how to document hours volunteered (im not sure whether you can get a certificate that documents the hours worked , i know v inspired do this but im too old for that apparently lol :confused:

) any help would be appreciated! :smile:

Reply 1

Pixie-Bee

Shadowing an art therapist, is probably the one you really want. See if there are any local therapists in the area and if they will allow people to shadow them for a while. (there are confidentiality issues with this, but it might be possible - have you looked into it? I was allowed to sit in on art therapy group sessions, occasionally helping, at our secondary school.)

There's a really good charity near me, called the Enabled Centre, where people with disabilities drop in for the day and take part in creative activities. There is a range of art and support staff, and they also accept volunteers (I've just completed a week work experience here). Maybe having a look round your local charities and seeing if there is anything similar in your area? If you're qualified, then you could apply for a paid position in this sort of work (if there are any being advertised), if not then volunteering is always an option.

There's this scheme in Great Ormond Street Hospital. It looks as though they sometimes accept volunteers, so if you're anywhere near here, it might be worth a look? If not, try the nearby hospitals and see if they run similar schemes?

I'm not sure, anything working with people would count I guess (you'd know this better than I would)? So care homes, schools, social work, mental health charities and hospitals. It's just a matter of phoning/emailing all of the above, to find experience opportunities. There should be plenty of volunteering opportunities. Paid work might be more difficult to get ahold of.

As for how to document the volunteering, I don't have a clue. I've just tried searching it online and nothing (other than v inspired) seems to be coming up. Maybe someone else can help you with this bit.

E: I've just noticed you say specifically for clients, do you mean people to practise art therapy on? Or just fields related to art therapy - so working with art and vulnerable people? I think most of my suggestions would probably still work in either case, but things like care homes, would have to be specifically creative related (e.g. group art sessions on at the homes)

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 2

bradford_girl

Shadowing a art therapist would be excellent. I am seeing a art therapist tomorrow, so i shall ask her, like you say confidentiality is a issue really so it might not be possible at all to shadow her with clients and she likes things to be private but i will ask anyway. i'll also ring BAAT to try to contact other therapists.

That charity 'Enabled centre' sounds ideal i wish there was one near me , i might have to travel a bit to find another charity like that.

I am hoping that the work i am doing at the moment will count which is in a care home, it does say the work experience can be in health or education. Maybe i can ask the activities coordinators if they could do group art sessions there and ask the residents if they would like to do this.
I will just make a note in my diary on how many hours i do.

Thank you for your help, i will keep on searching! and eventually will get on that course. :smile:

Reply 3

tashad

Hi,

I have recently been accepted onto an Art therapy MA to begin Sept 2013 so if you need any info regarding work experience or getting onto the masters I can help! :smile:

Your care home experience will definitely count. You don't need experience directly related to art, I for instance volunteered at schools, a hospital and did lots of care work. It's always good to get a range of experience so the admission people know you're serious about getting onto the masters.
Some people have years and years of experience so you want to heighten your chances and work in a few different places :smile:

In regards to logging your hours.. jot them down in a notebook but also write down what you have learnt from these experiences as this will help you when it comes to writing your personal statement cos you want to prove to admissions that you have actually done the work. I didn't have any 'proof' exactly. Except your references should reflect the fact you've done this experience.

I found it easier to contact institutions such as hospitals/schools e.t.c directly rather than going through already planned 'voluntary opportunities'. It's all about sending lots of emails to charities! Don't be afraid to just ask!

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 4

bradford_girl

Hi Tashad,
Congratulations on getting onto a MA course in art therapy!, which university are you training with? Thanks for the message too i was thinking nobody is training in art therapy nomore! or it isn't very popular.

I have took your advice and asked my brothers friend who's a teacher to see if they need any help there, but they have just broke up, hopefully he will get back to me in the future. I'm not in a rush because i am doing a course this year so wont be able to do any more vol work until next June :frown:

.
I'll find it hard jotting the hours down in a notebook and writing down what i have learn't , what stuff did you learn from your experience?... at the moment i am learning to have patience in the care home.
Did you volunteer in a hospital or was it a paid job? Was it a psychiatric hospital?
Also what charities do you think i should contact, do you have any suggestions?

I am also worried about funding this course too but i think i may be able to get a careers loan.

hope to hear from you soon, thanks for your help so far.
Best wishes
Kriss :smile:

p.s How old are you if you don't mind me asking , my therapist says normally ppl go to train as art therapist when they are 30 hmm wonder if this is true.

Reply 5

tashad

Hi Kriss! Thank you! :colondollar:

I will be training at the University of Hertfordshire :smile:

The thing with art therapy is that it is quite specialist I guess although saying that it is somewhat difficult to get onto the MA as there are only a few Uni's in the UK which do the course. I know! I haven't really heard of any people wanting to do the course either, I was always on here trying to find advice posts but never found any :s-smilie:

It's tricky to say what you learn volunteering as it depends on the person but if you really think about it you learn so much in any work experience. For example, you say you have learnt patience in working at a care home, (I'm just guessing here) but I assume you would learn a number of things such as an insight into the difficulties older people have to live with, their feelings of being away from home, how they feel about being towards the end of their life. These are all issues you may not have been aware of before working at a care home.

The main things, I think, you need to record are your own understandings of the specific client group you are working with. For instance, I personally worked at a primary school with 4-5 year olds. Having never worked with little kids before I learnt lots of things like something that may seem obvious such as taking into account each individual child's development when you work with them 1:1. Like, some can't write there name, some can, some can't understand how to glue paper together!
There are short courses in art therapy which will give you advice on these things too. I did one and was great! Helped me so much!

I volunteered in a hospital within an art dept. charity for a few months, it wasn't a psychiatric hospital. The main thing is too work with 'vulnerable' people. Hmm... I'm not sure on what charities you should contact (depends where you live) but I live in London so there a lot around like, core arts. If you do a google search there are art charities around who work with people suffering from mental health issues. It all depends on who you want to work with and doing what? Because you could do anything like sports activities with people with learning disabilities... this would count too as relevant experience.

Concerning funding the course, which is a great worry for all of us who don't have rich parents to depend on! well, I just saved up myself! I'm 25 so I graduated in 2010 then saved up the fees for years. Do you mind me asking how old you are and when you are thinking on doing the MA?

Yeah I heard that many people are in their 30's, 40's etc but to be honest the average age in my interview was probably around 27ish. They were all younger than I thought but then the people on the short course I did were a variety of ages from people who were still at uni (20yrs) to people like me (24/25), few 30 yr olds and few 40-50's.

Sorry for the long essay! But I hope this helps! :smile:

p.s I also think it isn't exactly popular because of all the experience you need before hand and the fierce application process is usually a deterrent. All the art therapy MA's (I hear!) are very over subscribed though!

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 6

sha33a

Hi
I am about to start AT this year and having problems finding the correct therapist, because as you know students are required to see a therapist throughout the time of study. Do you have any suggestions?

Reply 7

lookingforhelp

Original post by sha33a

Hello,
I don't really have any advice about this other than to go onto the BAAT website and to look for registered art therapists in your area and just email them, but how much experience did you have in the art therapy/mental health sector before you were accepted into a course? :smile:

Reply 8

hanarna