Intermodal Expressive Arts Therapy

Profile

The International University of Calw offers a three-year career-complementing masters program in “Intermodal Expressive Arts Therapy”. This program culminates in the awarding of a university degree, which is recognized both nationally and internationally, and prepares graduates for senior leadership positions in the health sector and educational fields. In addition, it gives graduates authorization to pursue doctoral studies.
The program is centered around visual design and artistic expression as well as therapeutic-educational competences. The inner linkages between types of art will be expressly incorporated into the program as well as problems linked with health and education that arise in particular due to growing shifts in today’s society.

Requirements

For entrance into the program, a professional university degree is required in one of the following subjects: psychology, special education/therapeutic pedagogy, social work, educational science, medicine, nursing, theology or a related discipline such as art, music or design (diploma/BA); state-recognized bachelor’s degrees in art therapies such as art and music therapy are also accepted. In addition, at least three years of professional experience in one of these fields is expected.

Applicants with a university degree but different professional backgrounds may also be accepted for matriculation in exceptional cases depending on their personal qualifications.

Applicants that do not meet the criteria listed above can complete a two-year certificate program at the university’s “Institute for Advanced Scientific Education” as a continuing education activity. This program concludes with the conferral of a university certificate – highly useful in today’s job market – as an “Academically accredited Creative Educator / Art Therapist”.

You can access information and application materials at our university office.

Discipline: Creative Pedagogy

For at least as long as “Pisa” & Co. has been a topic, Germany’s schools have been caught in a period of change: They are increasingly charged with acting independently and establishing new learning objectives and structures. Similar expectations are placed on other institutions that deal with children’s education such as youth centers and kindergartens. In order to address the increasing pressure to perform and at the same time to avoid the growing propensity towards violence in schools, there needs to be an expansion of the traditional pedagogic competences.

The use of artistic media helps to improve teachers’ and educators’ access to their own resources. At the same time, the study program explores different opportunities for mixing up classes and the school environment with creative activities. The artistic end result that arises is then the visible representation of what is happening within the children – the opening of new channels of communication as well as an improvement to their social competence.

In the program, you will learn:

• Fundamental principles of humanistic psychology
• To improve educators’ relational competence
• A comprehensive repertoire of creative methods
• To bolster teachers – especially those in problematic schools
• To recognize disturbance patterns in children and young adults and to positively impact them.

Discipline: Art Therapy

You are a trained psychologist or doctor, or you deal with sick people in some other professional capacity. In this program, you will gain an in-depth understanding of healing processes and how to offer sustained support to your patients. Using the skills you gain in this program, you will be able to use different artistic media in a complementary process to therapy, address patients effectively, activate healing powers, and identify paths to sustainable healing and solutions.

In this program, you will learn:

• How to get a clear idea of the patient’s condition and how to approach their situation in a targeted fashion;
• How to use art therapy interventions for activating patients;
• To make use of the available resources and foster them to the patients’ benefit so that the artistic inclinations that arise can contribute to overcoming disorders and achieving lifelong meaning;
• To identify sustainable paths to health and recovery;
• To independently design art therapy projects, and implement them or offer them in the context of a corresponding sponsorship.