Masters in Therapeutic Arts Practice
Overview
This is a 3 year part time program.
The first 18 months:
All students complete the first six compulsory subjects.
On successful completion of the compulsory subjects students may exit with a Graduate Diploma in Therapeutic Arts practice or progress* into semester 2.
The second 18 months:
All students will enter into Workplace Practice.
*Students will be required to meet with progressions requirements in order to progress into a study stream
Study Sequence
What can I call myself after I have successfully completed the MIECAT Masters?
See what our students are saying about us
Jaya’s experience
Jaya highlights the integrated approach to multimodal arts-based inquiry practice.
Compulsory Subjects
Experience and Relational Presence
This subject provides an introduction to the values that inform the MIECAT multimodal approach to inquiring with an emphasis on being attentive to the nuances of relational lived and intersubjective experiencing. It is anticipated that students will learn strategies for becoming more attentive to, and aware of the detail of moment to moment experiencing as it occurs in relationship to others, to the material world and in different places and spaces.
Embodied Awareness
This subject expands upon the understanding of MIECAT core values of experiencing, relationality, emergence, multimodality explored in Unit One, by focusing greater awareness on the immediacy of bodily sensation, sensory perception and somatic experiencing in our relational being with others, through time and in space/place.
Engaging With Materials
Students will be provided with the opportunity to explore a range of modes, materials and arts processes, and describe interactions with creative modes, tools, materials and emergent forms. They will also attend to the detail of their arts making and to respond to moment-to-moment resonances. A focus on the details of the relational experience (the intersubjective relationship) with the materials and the emergent forms is central to this unit.
Emerging Enquiry 1
This subject offers students an opportunity to closely attend to the emerging process of making a multimodal arts inquiry into what they have come to know in their studies so far. It is anticipated that students will consolidate and further explore emerging understandings gained over the course of the year, as well as develop skills in presenting/writing up their multimodal arts inquiry.
Patterns of Emotional Experiencing
In this subject, students will learn how to intersubjectively attune to their own and the co-inquirer’s emotional experiencing and describe and represent this emotional experiencing through different modalities. Students will also learn to inquire into patterns of emotional experiencing and understand how emotions connect to needs, values and choices.
Refining Companioning Skills
The focus of this subject is for students to develop and refine their skills and experience in companioning practice, and cultivate reflexivity through reflective practice and engagement with feedback. Students will undertake experiential inquiries through companioning with their peers in a variety of contexts, using diverse modalities and for different durations.
Study Options
Following successful completion of the compulsory subjects, students will continue into the Workplace Practice “stream”. Practicums will be located within work place contexts. Practicums will be an equivalent of 1.5 days per week for 12 months completed in year 3 of the Masters program.
Workplace Practice
The subjects in the Workplace Practice option are designed for a professional application. Students who select this option will have the opportunity to undertake a practicum placement within a variety of workplace contexts. The workplace settings may require students to engage with different emphases, for example, with a community arts and health application, responding to needs within an education context, or bringing a more intentional therapeutic focus. These may vary according to workplace requirements, whether students are supporting health and wellbeing, developing curriculum or arts programs, engaging community connection, enabling creative expression and meaning making, or running group therapy sessions. Practicums may be taken within your own workplace with certain conditions. Students will incorporate the MIECAT approach to arts inquiry and multi-modal practice and will undertake an arts project at the practicum workplace.
The work of this subject is grounded in the understanding that as humans we are inherently relational. In Working Relationally, students will work ethically with their peers to inquire into the patterned nature of relational experiencing using and adapting the procedures of MIECAT’s form of inquiry.
In this subject students will work in an extended companioning relationship with one or two peers. Together they will be expected to develop a productive and collaborative working relationship, maintaining an ongoing reflective/reflexive inquiry into their processes and choices as they inquire multi-modally into significant moments of lived experience.
In this subject students will develop and refine practical companioning skills, as well as the ability to work relationally and multimodally, in the context of either Community Arts and Health, Therapy, or Education. They will develop these skills in their practicum placement organisations. It is expected that students will work with participants within their placement organisations, using a MIECAT approach to therapeutic arts practice and inquiry as the basis for their work.
This subject follows on from WP1. In WP2 students will continue to develop and refine practical companioning skills, as well as the ability to work relationally and multimodally, in their placement setting. Students are expected to be able to demonstrate a high-level skill in multi-modal companioning as well as reflective and reflexive practice in relation to learning edges. This includes the capacity to be responsive to participants, to act ethically in their work with service users and other professionals, to respond appropriately to all feedback from supervisors, and to be a reflective reflexive practitioner.
What can I call myself after I have successfully completed the MIECAT Masters?
This will depend largely on your other existing qualifications, and on the field/sector that you enter at the completion of the program.
The Masters program has 5 purposes which need to be understood by prospective students who are considering MIECAT for their career development:
- It is essentially a training and educational program in a particular form of arts-based inquiry that aims to assist people to make sense of their lives.
- It can be an opportunity for intensive personal/professional development in experiential/studio-arts work.
- It offers a form of inquiry into human meaning, based on values of being experiential, relational, multimodal and emergent. This form of inquiry can be adapted by those already in employment who wish to bring aspects of this approach into their work with others, in any therapeutic, community, educational or research setting.
- It can be an entry point for those wanting to start a career as a Creative Arts Therapist, or to expand their therapeutic career, utilising the experiential arts procedures of inquiry.
- It can be an entry point for arts-based research and scholarship to work on projects or engage in further study.
What are my career opportunities?
- Community development
- Community arts projects
- Private Counselling and Creative Art Therapy practices
- Research Projects and further scholarship opportunities
- Community Health/Drug and Alcohol Hospital settings
- Exhibiting Artists
- Organisational Consultants
- Education and Student Welfare