Vocational Training

We offer a 4-year vocational training in drama therapy in cooperation with universities at three locations in Berlin, Ludwigsburg and the Ruhr area. This is completed with a university certificate as “Artistic Therapist”. Prerequisite for the further education is a completed professional training or a university degree in the therapeutic, social or artistic field. You will receive sound practical training in dramatherapeutic methods and learn theoretical approaches to professional therapeutic use of the artistic medium of theater in therapeutic and social fields of application.

In Berlin, the current vocational training course started in October 2023. The focus of this vocational training is on body-oriented therapy methods and the performative process in drama therapy on the basis of a Systems-oriented approach.

In Baden-Württemberg, the focus of vocational training is on the application of drama therapy in social and cultural fields of work and in organizstions. In Ludwigsburg, the next course will begin in April 2024. The current course began in January 2021.

The next vocatioinal training in the Cologne area (NRW) with the focus on clinical drama therapy for adults, children and adolescents will start in September 2025. The admission seminars will take place in April and May 2025.

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Drama therapy is an arts therapy form that has been firmly established for over 50 years in the USA, England and the Netherlands, and increasingly so in Germany. The action-oriented application of artistic means and processes allows a fruitful cooperation between the original healing function of theatre and the methods of modern psychotherapy. As an artistic therapy, it focuses on creative processes in which access to existing resources is sought. Present-related and action-oriented aspects as well as the therapeutic relationship are in the foreground.

The vocational training teaches the application of dram-therapeutic methods on the basis of a systems-approach. It is applicable in clinical as well as psychosocial fields of work, in the work with organisations in the social as well as in the professional environment, in body-oriented and performative processes and includes individual as well as group therapy.

TARGET GROUP
This vocational training is aimed at people who work in healing, artistic and pedagogical professions or in organisational and personnel development and who want to apply the diverse resources of the medium of theater therapeutically in their fields of work, e.g. doctors, therapists, social pedagogues, actors, geriatric/health care nurses, people working in management, etc.

FIELDS OF WORK
Drama therapy can be applied in clinical and psychosocial fields as individual, couple and group therapy.
Drama therapists work, for example, in

  • psychiatric/psychosomatic/psychotherapeutic clinics and institutions
    addiction facilities
  • outpatient and inpatient youth welfare facilities
  • in projects and facilities for refugees, migrants, traumatised persons, etc.
  • school projects and hotspot schools
  • correctional facilities and probation services
  • women’s shelters
  • Counseling centers
  • Facilities for the elderly and disabled
  • hospices
  • in the areas of coaching, team building, organisational and management consulting
  • in independent practice

PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS

  • Minimum age 25 years
  • completed vocational training/studies and professional experience
  • 60 hours of self-therapy (some of which can be completed during the training period)
  • Participation in one of the admission seminars

GOALS OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING
Participants will be enabled to use theatrical media as an arts therapy method with different target groups in clinical, psycho- and socio-therapeutic fields of work, both for groups and for individuals. To this end, they acquire:

  • Elements of the artistic theater “craft” in their application for therapeutic goals: Body, breath, voice, speech and text work, acting techniques, scene and role design, staging/directing.
  • Fundamentals of psychotherapeutic “craft”: Developmental and healing models, symptom patterns/psychopathology, diagnostics, intervention techniques/crisis intervention, group dynamics, therapeutic relationship and attitude
  • Drama-therapeutic methods and their indication: analysis of body and symbolic language, role diagnostics, drama-therapeutic process accompaniment and biographically centered scene work, theatrical intervention, work with rituals and imaginative processes
  • Drama-therapeutic approaches to testing as well as opening up new perspectives in the interplay of individual autonomy and system structures to promote flexibility and adaptability.
  • To make possible and visible in non-ordinary space the encounter with existential themes of being human and of individual and collective sense-making.
    Development of a therapeutic attitude that enables to perceive inner processes in oneself and others, to reflect on them and to use them in a way that promotes development.

STRUCTURE OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING
Theater therapy is a highly effective form of therapy that allows direct access to unconscious and often early pre-linguistic issues through body and imagination activating methods. This instrument requires – responsibly applied – a very thorough training and a well-accompanied development process of the prospective drama therapist, which also includes the confrontation with existential personal and collective issues.

We offer our vocational training as a 4-year course and follow the guidelines of the BAG-KT, the association of professional associations of artistic therapies in Germany. The BAG-KT is committed to the establishment of Artistic Therapy in the German health care system and has established quality assurance guidelines for all Artistic Therapies – Art, Music, Dance and Theater Therapy – which require a minimum of 4 years of training with a minimum number of teaching and supervision hours.

Our 4-year vocational training includes 1200 UE with a total workload of 3,175 hours, consisting of:

  • 17 training modules, two of these modules are the annual DGfT Summer Academies, a 4-day international symposium on current approaches to drama therapy in theory/research and practice
  • self-organised regional learning and intervision groups
  • drama therapy self-awareness
  • an internship in an artistic or therapeutic field of work
  • an assessment after the third year as admission to the practical phase
  • a supervised application phase in a field of practice of the student’s choice in the fourth year, in which what has been learned is applied in a drama therapy project under supervisory guidance (3 supervision weekends plus 40 hours of individual and/or group supervision).

Admission seminar
The admission seminar offers participants the opportunity to get to know the working methods of drama therapy in order to decide whether this vocational training is suitable for them. For the lecturers, the admission weekend serves to get to know the participants in their practical work and to be able to give them feedback as to whether they consider participation in the vocational training to be appropriate. For this purpose, it is especially important to clarify the motivation and the willingness and ability to engage in therapeutic processes and the media of body and theater.

Language
Please note that all vocational training courses are held in German, it is therefore essential have a good understanding of the language. More information about the respective courses in the three locations please go to the German part of this website under Bildung/Ausbildung.

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Since the winter semester 2015, there is an 8-semester bachelor’s program in drama therapy followed by a master’s degree at the Nürtingen University of Applied Sciences. More info at www.hfwu.de or 07022 201-0.

In Octobre 2024 will start a 6-semester bachelor’s program in drama therapy at Medical School Hamburg.