This video shows excerpts from a workshop conducted by Judy Rubin, an art therapist, and Ellie Irwin, a drama therapist, with 9 Child Life Therapists and a Music Therapist at a Children’s Hospital. The group is led in art and drama activities, illustrating possible interventions with seriously ill children. In addition to the potential use of the specific exercises, instruction is offered throughout about basic principles for sensitivity and success in ways of incorporating art and drama more safely and effectively. Staff members are invited to raise questions during the training.
Participants are encouraged to play with multicolored plasticine clay for creating 3D sculptures to use in improvisational dramatic play. After engaging in silent movement-drama, moving the sculptures around a shared paper space until finally settling on a space, the children are then invited to create nonverbal “worlds” on paper using drawing materials. They begin dramatic play inventing voices for their characters – creating puppet play stories, both with ready made and personalized puppets they made.
This video was formerly included in the Expressive Media Arts Therapies Films Collection distributed by Expressive Media Inc.
