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Hello All,
As per title really. My wife is an Art Teacher, bit demoralised by it all and Art Therapy intrigues her so just wondered if anyone on STW knows a friendly one that perhaps she could chat too? Based in Chelmsford, Essex.
In addition you will win me £1 and a packet of minstrels because she takes the mick when I say I've posted on here asking questions so I bet her I'd be able to help! Willing to share the minstrels....
A bit of oven cleaning therapy normally sorts my Mrs out
Ive had art therapy and found it a bit of a waste of time.
Clay therapy and sculpture forming I found to be excellent. This has to be combined with actual therapy at the same time so she would need to retrain as a therapist too.
I have a friend who has a degree in it and years of volunteering experience doing it but has found it extremely difficult to get paid work, particularly at the moment with the NHS cuts. She very much enjoys it but the openings are few and far between and there is a lot of competition for them, and few positions are fulltime.
I have done a bit of private art tutoring on the side for years and someone I lived by was in charge of a young offenders prison. We got chatting and I did a few sessions teaching art in prisons as a form of therapy, I was shocked by some of the work that came out both in terms of quality and subject matter. On the whole it was rewarding and far better than teaching secondary which was just an exercise in paper work and shouting.
& what chief said above, hardly any openings.
I work with an (extremely) good art therapist,, as is her partner. They might be willing to have a chat or mail you, I would have to ask in the week. In Devon. Any good, you can mail me half a packet of minstrels!
teaching art in prisons as a form of therapy, I was shocked by some of the work that came out both in terms of quality and subject matter.
I used to do a bit of that, had a few inmates get places at art school on release. Depends on the prison a bit, I was at what was termed a 'Local Prison' which was either people on short/light sentences or people at the end of the sentence being transferred closer to home prior to release. So it was a pretty transient group and there wasn't a lot of depth to it as a result as other than in rare instances you might only have someone in your class for 3 or 4 weeks. I've known people do similar work in prisons for long term / life inmates and theres definitely more substance to that. A lot of paintings of wolves lurking in dark woods.
On an art therepy tip I was going to reccomend going to see [url= http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/souzou.aspx ]Souzou at the Wellcome Collection[/url]..... but it finished today. Theres good online stuff about it though
I was paying 90 euros an hour and she was very busy.There was a three week wait for new patients to be seen. This was in Vienna mind.
i work in a special need school and we have a few art therapist .
seems to be working quite well .
Thanks for all your replies; some really useful help there and in a way reaffirms some ideas we initialy had about it.
Instant hit, if you could ask your friend I would be most appreciative!
I know a retired art therapist at my Quaker meeting, she still volunteers doing it in prisons, she talks about her experience in a similar way to King-ocelot.
Think it's hard to get paid work in this climate though.
I work with an art therapist and know a couple of others elsewhere in the service.
Good advice/observations above re distribution of jobs and full time/part time. (ours is 1.5 days a week as there just isn't enough work to justify employing her any more. Suits her though as she is a new-ish mum with full time professional husband.)
Other issues will be the extraordinary cost of training (it is a masters-level qualification and apart from the rather specialist tuition, you need loads of supervision in practice by already-experienced art therapists.) ...and that last point means unless you live in a sprawling metropolis, you are potentially looking at a lot of travel for your 'practice' time (ie at work) and wherever you find a vacancy when you are qualified...
great job though imho.
I have a friend who is an art therapist - covers most of Hampshire I think! Lots of driving for him now and part of a multi-disciplinary team but he is now the only art therapist.
As said above ~ I think he finds it rewarding but cutbacks etc. make jobs esp hard to come by and he is now a bit of a loner!