An in-person, CPD intensive in west London.

10 x monthly days across 2024.

Learn to incorporate the following arts modalities in therapy:

• drawing and painting

• sculpture and clay

• sandtray

• haiku, lyric writing

• musical improvisation, sound healing

• movement

• drama and voicework

• puppetry

This year-long (2024) in-person course draws inspiration from the pioneering work of Gestalt therapists Violet Oaklander and Mark McConville whose approaches put the relationship between therapist and young person at the heart of the therapeutic process.

Children and adolescents use their contact skills as relational tools; troubled young people struggle to make good contact; others may suffer from low self-esteem. Therapy helps facilitate exploration of emotional blockages and ‘unfinished business’, helping children and young people reconnect with emotions, body, intellect and imagination, rediscovering competence and resilience.

This workshop caters for counsellors, psychotherapists, teachers, health and other professionals who are working directly with children and young people in a therapeutic or pastoral capacity. It is likely to interest practitioners familiar with Gestalt therapy principles, and those wishing to explore their own relationship with creativity and play.

Dates

Hours: 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 5.30pm (65 hours CPD over 10 days)

• Wednesday 24 January

• Wednesday 21 February

• Wednesday 27 March

• Tuesday 23 April

• Thursday 23 May

• Thursday 27 June

• Thursday 25 July

• Thursday 5 September

• Thursday 24 October

• Thursday 21 November

Fees and booking

• Fee: £1,050

• Fee includes materials, worksheets, attendance certificate* and refreshments

• Small bursary for overseas applicants or those on low wages – details on application

To register, or for more information: https://www.gestaltartscounsellingandpsychotherapy.co.uk/working-with-young-people-a-year-long-gestalt-arts-intensive-2024/.

* An attendance certificate is awarded on completion of the course. Hours also count toward the Violet Solomon Oaklander Foundation’s certification programme.

About Gazebo Training School London (GTSL)

Jon founded GTSL to further the pioneering Gestalt psychotherapy work with children and adolescents undertaken by Violet Oaklander.

Building on over 20 years of working with the Oaklander projective arts-based approach, Jon has incorporated into his practice ideas from leading theorists, therapists and researchers in the field of working with young people, including adults in transition and families.

This approach, together with Jon’s experience of working dialogically with individuals and families in hospital, community and residential settings, utilises relational principles that help facilitate emotional expression and field-aware choice-making across many cultures.

About Jon Blend (course facilitator)

Jon (MA Dip Child, Dip Psych) has delivered Oaklander-inspired trainings to therapy institutes in the UK, Georgia and Poland and given keynote addresses and workshops in Canada, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine and the USA,

During the pandemic, drawing inspiration from his visits to Gazebo School at Esalen, Jon established Gazebo Training School London, purchasing a ‘pop up’ gazebo and working creatively ‘al fresco’ with clients in natural surroundings.

Jon facilitates annual trainings, working ‘under cover’, online and outdoors.