FAQ - General

What are my professional options in the field of arts and healing?

  • Enroll in a PhD, PsyD, or master's degree program in clinical or counseling psychology, social work, or marriage and family therapy, and then supplement your training with creative arts therapy training in your art form(s) of interest.
  • Enroll in a graduate program in one of the creative arts therapies. Most of the credentials offered in these fields, which teach integration of specific art forms with mental health practices, are at the master’s level. 
  • Enroll in a two-year training program in Expressive Arts Therapies. These programs offer credentialing in the integrated use of a variety of art forms for therapeutic purposes.
  • Enroll in our Certificate Program in Social Emotional Arts. This comprehensive program is for anyone who wishes to learn how to design, deliver, and evaluate their own effective programs. It offers practical training that addresses what professionals may encounter in the community. Creative arts therapists who have taken the program have reported that it is invaluable and offers training in areas not addressed by their previous academic curricula. Many of our trainees come from the arts, education, mental health, and complementary health care. Some are fresh out of college and exploring career options, others are mid-career and wanting to add a therapeutic element to their work, and still others are making career transitions after many years in other professions.
  • Enroll in our online, four-session Social Emotional Arts on a Shoestring training offered as part of our signature programming, or join us for the two-day online offering at our annual conference on Creativity & the Arts in Healing. This training offers scripted activities in four different art forms that are adaptable to any population, setting, ability level, time frame, or budget. It can be used with groups or individuals. It teaches the key principles of social emotional arts work.
  • Additionally, volunteering is a great way to familiarize yourself with the field and what it is like to work with different populations. Here are several possibilities:
    • We often seek translators/interpreters to volunteer their services at our workshops.
    • There are two programs that partner with UCLArts & Healing, which often actively seek volunteers: ALMA (Addressing Loneliness through Movement and Art) and the Creative Minds Project (although Creative Minds Project may require more extensive training in order to be involved).
    • Some of our organizational partners often seek volunteers as well: Safe Place for Youth, Able Arts Work, and The Miracle Project are a few examples. 
    • We also partner with a Therapeutic Arts Group for UCLA medical and undergraduate students.

 

What volunteer opportunities, internships, fellowships, or paid positions do you have?

We train people to deliver their own programs and don't have a center where we provide direct services.  If you take some of our training programs, we may be able to notify you of volunteer or paid opportunities to deliver them to community organizations that request services. While we do not offer formal internship or fellowship opportunities, we welcome professional volunteers in the domains of marketing, videography and computer technology.  We also sometimes need extra assistance at specific events or for special projects. We don’t typically have paid positions available; however, we periodically need to hire research or administrative assistants. You are welcome to submit a resume to info@uclartsandhealing.org and we will keep your resume on file in case an opportunity comes up. Some organizations that we partner with regularly seek volunteers, such as Able Arts Work, The Miracle Project, and Theatre of Hearts.  Inside Out Community Arts, for example, offers a series of training sessions followed by paid working opportunities in after-school middle and high school settings.

What is your general program cancellation refund policy?

In order to keep our programs affordable yet self-sustaining, we regret that we are unable to offer refunds on enrollment fees; however, we offer credit towards a future program of your choice to be used within 12 months.  Credit can be applied toward any of our programs within 12 months.  For programs being offered at a higher fee, you would be responsible for covering any balance due.  If the program is offered at a lower fee, then you would waive any remaining balance. If you are not able to use your credit within this period, we hope you will find comfort in knowing that you are supporting a meaningful cause. There are some exceptions for specific programs that represent a larger financial commitment.  For those programs, such as the Certificate Program in Social Emotional Arts or Launching Your Career in Social Emotional Arts, there are windows of time in which cancellation refunds are possible.  We suggest that you review the information on any program thoroughly to check for specific cancellation refund policies.

How can I get my program listed on your site?

The submissions that we list are typically those offered by organizations or practitioners with whom we already have a partnership or collaborative arrangement. We also list programs that meet our standards for social-emotional best practices and are not readily available to the public. We give special consideration to professionals with whose work we are already familiar, as well as graduates of our Certificate Program in Social Emotional Arts. Priority is also given to free or affordable programs offered by established and reputable organizations or professionals. Our policy is not to post information about fundraisers, unless they are for a program that is connected to us. If you feel that your program may be of interest to us, feel free to send information to us at info@uclartsandhealing.org.

How can I become a UCLArts and Healing instructor?

UCLArts and Healing typically recruits instructors that fall into one of these categories:
  1. Professionals who have completed a formal degree program in the creative arts therapies, typically involving masters level integrated training in mental health and the arts with supervised internship hours and a certification option.
  2. Mental health practitioners who have created a social-emotional arts curriculum for a specific population that is well documented and tested.
  3.  Graduates of the UCLArts and Healing Social Emotional Arts Certificate Program who have demonstrated mastery of their training in the design and delivery of programs that maximize the social-emotional benefits of arts experiences.
  4. Recruitment is also often based in knowledge of an individual’s work and recommendations from trusted sources.
In addition, the proposed teaching content/format/cost needs to balance out our offerings and be of interest to our constituents, as we can best determine based on experience. If you are interested in becoming an instructor for UCLArts and Healing, we suggest that you attend one of our programs to gain understanding of our work and introduce yourself to us. You are also welcome to send website and any other information about yourself to info@uclartsandhealing.org to help us determine the goodness of fit.