Yau Shing-mu, current student
After finishing a government job in 2018, Yau began to study Expressive Arts Therapy, helping others express emotions through arts. Such therapy is unique, helping clients reflect on themselves, discover talent and irrigate their own personal growth. Art is more than an end in itself. It allows the artist, the singer, the poet, the dancer, to follow a path without any given route.
Expressive Arts Therapy is an alternative treatment modality I can offer to suitable clients. Soft skills in Expressive Arts Therapy can be applied to my daily interaction with my clients during consultations. I become a better psychiatrist as I’m now equipped with more professional skills and I can understand their needs better from different perspectives. I am now a psychiatrist-art therapist to act as a bridge between the two fields of professionals.
This programme helps me to understand and communicate with my clients better in an open and fun manner, and it’s easier and more open for many of them to start the therapy. It’s my second career as an expressive arts therapist, it equipped and prepared me with necessary skills, more importantly, throughout the process, I understand there are many options and areas that could choose, use and adopt to different varieties of population that I am serving.
Completing this programme has enabled me to accomplish my aspiration to assist children and adolescents with their mental health through the powerful modalities of the arts. This can provide myriad ways for self-expression when words are not found or enough. The practicing arts therapists teaching staff have given me valuable learning experiences as their doors are always open for support and advice. I have also appreciated the guest lecturers from around the world that have enriched my experience.
This programme not only has enriched my knowledge base in expressive arts therapy, it has also connected me with a bunch of great cohort with different professional background journey and deepening my personal experience on this journey of becoming an expressive arts therapist. I am very lucky to have encountered resourceful and kind-hearted cohort coming from diverse professional backgrounds, such as educational psychologist, social workers, teachers and practicing artists. The reflective discussion and exchange we shared in the program made us companions on this collective and transformative journey of becoming expressive arts therapist.
This programme is where you can meet artists, performers, business people, educators and even scientists from different cultures, and go through a journey together to become therapists. Healing, in the modern world, is both art and science. Being a therapist requires both a kind heart with the capacity to accept differences and a creative mind with textbook and real-world knowledge. It was from the exchanges with my fellow classmates and teachers that I began to find the balance.
Without Human Beings, there will be no Art. This programme is more than a career path, it is a vocational calling to those who believe in the healing power of Art. It transforms the misconception that creating or appreciating art is only for the artists/elite/academia. This program inspire Art’s intrinsic qualities to permeate invisible barriers, cultivate imaginations, open doors to different cultures, connect all walks of life, create hope and most of all, to bridge between The Study of the Soul (Psychology) and The Language of the Soul (Arts).
The programme’s rich hands-on practice and theoretical rigor created a truly transformative experience, while its supportive, diverse community made the learning process joyful as well.
Through the study programme, I’ve become even more committed to the Expressive Arts Therapy that there is a way of promoting active engagement and the sense of well-being in life. I am strengthened to actively promote life uniqueness and inclusiveness as the key attributes of human beings and the organizations; engage the people in the person-directed care environment with the nurturance of body-mind-spirit, and forge active and creative arts connections to the broader community.
The programme is resourceful in helping us to develop sense in expanding clients’ repertoire. It is innovative, creative and the faculty is very helpful in helping us to train us with using an integrated approach.
By doing artworks, transformations happened when new insights were gained. Besides, the courses enable me to re-appreciate myself as well as others as very unique aesthetic human beings.
It is the place where Eastern and Western cultures and philosophies are adopted in the research and application of expressive arts therapy
The programme has an emphasis on learning in consideration of Asian cultures, which would be applicable for me in my work. And there are students from a wide range of fields and backgrounds to learn from.
I can learn multiple arts forms of expression and experience its benefits for healing through arts making.
I feel that the instructors here are very passionate. They all have lots of experiences in arts and helping others.