Playing in the Ruins: Developing an Arts Based Practice in Bereavement Care
This Cruse Masterclass will enable participants to exercise their creative imagination and enhance their bereavement support skills through an understanding of the relatively new field of Expressive Arts Therapy (EXA). An arts based approach to practice not only helps clients to heal the wounds of loss but also helps the practitioner to develop more effective self-care strategies. All people have an innate ability to be creative and the creative process has a healing power. Experiences of loss and bereavement can be shattering in many different ways and the expressive arts therapies have a vital role in the restoration of capacity and meaning construction.
Whilst art making ability is not required, an appreciation of current bereavement models will help participants get the most from this masterclass. In the words of Stephen K. Levine one of the founders of EXA, “Who I am can often be understood in terms of what’s broken down in me, what ruins have been left for me to play with and to use to build something new.”
Irene Renzenbrink is an Australian social worker with 40 years experience in the health care field, specializing in palliative care, grief counselling and death education. Irene is a member of the prestigious invitational International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement founded by Dame Cicely Saunders with Dr. Colin Murray Parkes and other world leaders in 1974.
Classes available in London, Cardiff, Birmingham and Leeds
