TAIKKARI
kuvataideterapian työhuone
Sisko Miettinen
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Chapter 2
Did it give us tools to consider us as professionals?
-The student experiences and working possibilities of the pioneering art therapy Post Graduate Scheme (1998-2001):
Starting a new kind of education, for example a cross-cultural art therapy program, was sometimes like planting seedlings that one does not know anything about. During the times of planning and fighting for rights to exist, I had a dream about planting mimosas into a reluctant, muddy land. All the scenery was rainy and dark. Mimosas do not grow up in the northern circles: they belong to the warm Mediterranean climate. They do not grow in the Finnish ground; neither do they grow in Britain. We did it anyway with the help of our fifteen students and a small teaching team. Now, two years later, it seems that a miracle has happened: the plants are still alive, and the small garden has spread out independently all over the country. I wanted to make this survey, and sent a questionnaire, to give the ex-students a voice to express their feelings.
When doing things like this, even in the small scale like we did, the old education structures feel challenged by the newcomer, and the quality of the training is being questioned - especially if the host institute is rather new in the national academic structure as well. This is a natural way of reacting, but a hard learning environment for the teaching team, and for the pioneering students. It was hard to get support from the existing academic art therapy programs. Each program is running separately, without collaboration between each other.
I am now involved in the training of the second intake of art therapy students. The first lot of students was qualified more than two years ago. Most of the teaching team members were trained in Britain, and this was a bridge to bring a new kind of knowledge to Finland. We wanted to start training for professional art therapists, which is still rare at home but already established in Britain. We also found academic level important. Finnish standard of academic level training is high, a fact that has come out through a survey in a recent European Union education research project. Previously, the art therapy professionals in Finland were mostly trained as psychotherapists. Art therapy has not been fully approved as an independent profession, whereas music therapy has got an independent status of its own. In addition, there are private foundations offering alternative arts therapies education (Rudolf Steiner/Waldorf-education, expressive arts therapies). It is very difficult to evaluate and validate private courses on the national level. We wanted our students to get a legal position as academically trained art therapists. We also found it important to give the students a possibility to be taken seriously within the field of psychotherapy, and added more psychotherapy hours to the British curriculum.
The Finnish Ministry of Education has proposed, after lengthy discussions, that “art therapists” (music, art and psychodrama) should be classified in two different categories: “art psychotherapy” and “art therapy”. The “art psychotherapists” belong to the group called psychotherapists, and the “art therapists” belong to the group of “other professionals” (including rehabilitation, education, social- and health care). We do not know, as yet, the results about our category. The national evaluation is still unfinished. This means that my ex-students have been waiting for the national evaluation for the last two- three years.
It is very natural that every training institute involved with this process, is keen in trying to fit their students in the best possible class. The higher class, the better is the payment as well.
My opinion is that art therapy programs, if they are well done, include teaching on different theories about therapy, a lot of personal contact with trained and practicing arts therapists, the student’s own psychotherapy process, and time to produce art of one’s own. This is very expensive for the training institutes. Big lecture rooms are not essential, but the smaller seminar rooms are constantly needed. Short workshops and art therapy introduction courses do not give real tools to practice, compared with longer, professionally run programs.
When I saw the two suggested categories, I was wondering, what will come out of this classification? What kind of people are allowed to understand and explain the arts is it still the privilege of trained psychotherapists? The second class (with the background of being teachers, nurses, and social workers, with additional training in art therapy) may get rights to use artistic, therapeutic methods, but in a less specific way. The hidden problem here may well be, that a psychotherapist may have read his books, but did not study/ create his own images outside the treatment room - thus suggesting that the knowledge about arts is, miraculously, "naturally transmitted" or "inherited", instead of taught and personally experienced during the training?
I do not think that it is possible. Neither is it possible to learn what art is, without personally swimming in the deep river of art. Inner fantasies, expressed in words, and visual images made inside the therapy room differ a lot from each others. This is self-evident for a trained art therapist - but is it for a psychotherapist?
Feedback from the questionnaire (qualified art therapy students):
Half of the qualified art therapy students who answered the questionnaire, had found the training experience heavy - they
used words "heavy" and "hard":
- It was like a diving deep, hard but gave me much
- It was an uncertain pathway, heavy and expensive training
- I found it hard to explain for outsiders, what art therapy was about
- It was hard because I had to work with my attitudes and with the incoming information all the time
Little more than third of the students described the experience as a whole with the word "fragmented":
- Especially at the beginning I was feeling fragmented
- The teaching as a whole was left fragmented
- If I did not have my previous working experience, I could not cope
- This British-Finnish training package has stayed fragmented in my mind, and it has been hard for the employers to figure out what it is in the conservative health care circles
Criticism was raised towards the uncertainty of the future position of art therapists, and towards the background of some classmates who came from outside the health care world, and towards the hierarchy and conservatism in the hospitals.
In spite of the critics, everyone said here that they had learned a lot, and all of them felt supported by their nearest family members and friends.
About one third mentioned especially, that the learning process is still not over - the training gave them much to work on till today.
Connections with the working life:
All the students said, that they were feeling very welcomed on both or either of the clinical placement. All of them had two separate placements, both lasting for 60 days. 62 % of the students said, that the clinical placements had been very good ways to find paid work later on. Most of the qualified students who answered the questionnaire, had received opportunities to work as an art therapist after the training, all of them part-time. A social worker, three nurses, a primary school teacher, an artist, - all of them had a good response from employers. The clinical practice system seems very effective as the way of finding working opportunities. Five students had received offers to do some work during/ right after their clinical placements. After getting qualified, some of them worked as art therapists besides their major job, some had their art therapy clients included in their weekly working hours. Only two qualified students were employed under the title "art therapist" in hospitals, the others performed individual and group art therapy under/ connected with some another title.
Surprisingly, it seems that the big hospitals are more ready to employ art therapists, although art therapist posts are very rare. A chief doctor from a big university hospital had offered part-time-work for one of our students with artistic background, suggesting that "psychotherapy status is good, if you succeed to get one, but not necessary". Only one of the students had felt, that her working possibilities were worse now, after this training - she felt that other people in the health care field found her additional training odd (later on she received some work in the teaching of the next art therapy program).
Half of the people said that the national evaluation is something very important, and that they are urgently waiting for the results. They were expecting that it would give them better changes to sell their expertise, and to explain their background. Only two people had a rather stable position as an art therapist, both working in the hospital environment, and they did not need as much of validation from outside as they others did. Other two with teaching background had resolved the situation individually: one is running art therapy evening courses besides teaching, the other is working in special education, but waiting for the possibility to concentrate on working as a therapist, instead of being employed as a teacher (one month after having answered the questionnaire she was offered a project using art therapy methods).
All except one were satisfied with the clinical placement opportunities, telling that they had usually been welcomed. The hospitals were generally more co-operative than the schools: "the school did not take me in very well, because therapy is not traditionally connected with the school world".
In this light it seems a good idea to have a system of two long clinical placements, for example in a situation where the first placement is less successful for some reason.
The answers for this question were very positive, and a variety of good effects on the private lives were reported. The biggest changes came out in the working life, where most of the students had experienced promising results. In addition to this, half of the people reported progress in their lives as artists, and one of them has continued her academic training further on. Even those, who did not get working opportunities as art therapists as yet, reported satisfaction in their personal lives:
- New friends and larger view of life
- A feeling, that I am something special
- My self-esteem is better now
- More peacefulness, more understanding and different views
- I have become more deep and human as a personality
- It has increased my understanding about myself
- I feel more strong and courageous
- Enormous experiences about the other people
- Deeper in touch with the needs of the others
A few people mentioned that the studies offered them possibilities to meet different people, whom they would not meet otherwise. This included professionals, other students, and patients/ clients. Most of the students have kept the relationships with their nearest friends and relatives stable during the past years. One has got married, and one was divorced.
Yes (100 %): all the qualified students who answered the questionnaire, had a strong feeling about being
professional art therapists at the moment:
- I am a professional at the beginning of my career, and I need to work more
- I have received very good feedback
- Of course the training gave me the tools to practise!
- I am proud of my professional skills
- I am a professional child art therapist, with the help of my training and work experience
- Even though I am not working as an art therapist at the moment, I have received the tools of sensibility to hear and to see, to accept the other person, and help him to reach his Self.
- I am a beginner, but a professional one
Some fears were expressed here, concerning demanding clients and fear for forgetting the skills, if there is no work as an art therapist available. The loneliness of representing such a rare profession with a few connections was mentioned in one answer. The overall answering tune in this question was very self confident.
Summary
After having studied these answers, I feel that I was very lucky, but totally ignorant in this serious business of throwing seedlings in a new ground. During the time of three years, our team put the plants in situations where they had to face very hard and heavy tests and tasks, and adjust very quickly to the new surroundings. The results of the survey make me wonder, if these eleven plants were mimosas at all, as I had dreamed. It seems now, that my interpretation was darkened by my own fears those times.
According to the answers, the ex-students do not sound as fragile and oversensitive, as mimosas do. On the contrary, they are brave and strong, and growing well at the moment, with the help of their knowledge and experience. The rainy British climate has given them liquid, and the muddy Finnish ground was good enough. The Finnish Ministry of Education may know better in the future, which species they represent. However, all the farmers have to accept losses. Three answers are missing, and I cannot get to know the reasons for the silence. Maybe the postman never delivered the letters, or the questions were too difficult.
References:
The Finnish Ministry of Education (2003): Report of the psychotherapist education committee 2003:6. Helsinki University Press.
Gordon, Rosemary (1978): Dying and Creating. A search for meaning. The Society of Analytical Society Ltd.
Lonnrot, Elias (1849): The Kalevala / Poems of the Kaleva District. Translated by Francis Peabody Macgoun,
Jr. Harvard University Press, 1963.
Sisko Miettinen Satakunta Polytechnic, Art Therapy Post Graduate Diploma Program, Finland e-mail: sirimi01@hotmail.com
MSc, BA, Registered Art Therapist (BAAT, HPC), Cert.Ed. Sisko was trained as and art therapist in Britain (Hertfordshire University), having then completed her Master’s degree in Social Psychology. She works as an art therapist in Finland, at the moment running her private practice as an art therapist, and working as the Program Tutor at Satakunta Polytechnic. Her first degree was in the literature, and she has published both personal and professional material.