Masters in Therapeutic Arts Practice
Overview
The Masters in Therapeutic Arts Practice is available in three study modes:
- Immersive (full-time over 2 years)
- Extended (part-time over 3 years)
- Combined (a blend of immersive and extended study over 2.5 years)
Study Sequence
Unit 1: Experiencing and Relational Presence
Unit 2: Embodied Awareness
Unit 3: Engaging with Materials
Unit 4: Emerging Inquiry
Unit 5: Patterns Of Emotional Experiencing
Unit 6: Refining Companioning Skills
Students who choose to exit at this point will be awarded the Graduate Diploma in Therapeutic Arts Practice.
Unit 7: Working Relationally
Unit 8: Attending To Process
Unit 9: Workplace Practice 1 (Practicum)
Unit 10: Workplace Practice 2 (Practicum)
Students who meet all requirements will be awarded the Masters of Therapeutic Arts Practice with a Specialisation in Creative Arts Therapy.
* All hurdles must be met for progression into the subsequent units of the course.
Study Sequence
What can I call myself after I have successfully completed the MIECAT Masters?
Course Subjects
Unit 1 – Experiencing and Relational Presence
This subject introduces experiencing and relational presence through the values that inform the MIECAT multimodal approach to inquiry. Students will learn procedures to become attuned to, and aware of moment to moment experiencing as it occurs in relationship to self, others, the material world and in different places and spaces.
There is an emphasis on being attentive to intersubjective experiencing.
Unit 2 – 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.
Unit 3 – 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.
Unit 4 – Emerging Enquiry
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.
Unit 5 – Patterns of Emotional Experiencing
In this subject, students will develop their ability to inquire into patterns of emotional experiencing, exploring how emotions connect to other elements of a pattern, with a specific focus on the relationship between emotions, embodied sensations, needs, values and choices. Through this process, students will learn how to intersubjectively attune to their own and the co-inquirer’s emotional experiencing and describe, represent and map this through different modalities.
Unit 6 – Refining Companioning Skills
In this subject, students will inquire into their companioning practice to develop and refine their skills. Companioning relationships will include regular offerings of peer feedback. Students will expand their understanding and practice of reflexivity, considering how difference, power and privilege can shape companioning. Working reflexively, they will be adapting the MIECAT approach to include explorations of pace, place, space, and multimodal choices.
The Masters of Therapeutic Arts Practice has a nested Graduate Diploma of Therapeutic Arts. Students might choose to exit after Unit 6.
In order to progress through the course students must achieve a credit grade or above in both the practical and multimodal assessment tasks in the graded subjects (Units 3-6).
Unit 7 – Working Relationally
This subject is grounded in the understanding that as humans we are inherently relational. Using and adapting MIECAT’s approach to inquiry, students will co-inquire to explore relational patterns within a chosen relationship. Engaging with an arts inquiry invitation drawn from the MIECAT lineage of practice, arts modalities and imaginal engagements will be used to slow down, inquire, and create expressions of self, another, and the relationship — as an entity in and of itself.
Attention will be given to content-in-process as it occurs within the multimodal relational inquiries. Students will reflect on the relational ethics and therapeutic value of choices and negotiations made in the collaborative inquiry process.
Unit 8 – Attending To Process
In this subject, students will work together in small groups of three or four to explore intersubjectivity and reflect on the process of companioning as they attend to the unfolding moments of emergent multimodal inquiry. Students will cultivate skills in reflecting in the moment on the process of inquiring and in reflexively attending to what arises in service of furthering an inquiry.
Established companioning skills will be extended in this unit, such as co-creating favourable conditions for shared inquiry that include cultivating presence in the ongoing fostering of trust and safety, responding to relational dissonance in the spirit of maintaining collabora
Workplace Practice
Subjects are designed for a professional application. Students will have the opportunity to undertake a placement in their final year 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.
Students will incorporate the MIECAT approach to arts inquiry and multi-modal practice and will undertake an arts project at the placement workplace.
Students will attend the workplace over the course of the year and will be given opportunities to work directly with participants, in support of the needs of the placement organisation and will develop their skills in adapting the MIECAT approach.
Practicums may be undertaken within students’ own workplaces subject to certain conditions. MIECAT cannot support practicums outside Australia or within a student’s own private practice.
During the year students will be supported by a workplace supervisor and participate in workshops and monthly MIECAT supervised small learning groups. WP1 and WP2 are the subjects that support students over the year while they are on placement.
Unit 9 – Workplace Practice 1
In this subject, students will develop and refine practical companioning skills, as well as the ability to work relationally and multimodally. They will develop these skills in their practicum placement organisations and be supported in this by small group supervision and a series of workshops.
Emphasis will be placed on reflective and reflexive capacities that support the development of therapeutic arts practice skills, as well as expanding student understanding of conceptual underpinnings and practice approaches described in relevant literature within the field of therapeutic practice and creative arts therapy.
Unit 10 – Workplace Practice 2
This subject follows on from WP1 and augments the work begun in first semester. In WP2 students will continue to develop and refine their multimodal, relational companioning and conceptual understanding of therapeutic arts practice.
As students have now been engaging in their placements for one semester, second semester offers students the opportunity to deepen their understanding of adapting the MIECAT approach as they refine their own practice skills. This is supported by engagement with literature from the field that is relevant to their own practice contexts.
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
See what our students are saying about us
Warren’s experience
Practising performing artist and therapeutic practitioner, Warren reflects on values-based learning in an immersive environment that calls for curiosity and offers support.