Creative Arts Therapy Festival In Bangalore: Drama, Music, Movement And Visual Art

Creative Arts Therapy Festival In Bangalore: Drama, Music, Movement And Visual Art

CMTAI in collaboration with Meeraqi is going to celebrate Creative Arts Therapy Festival comprising drama therapy, music therapy, creative movement therapy and visual art therapy on March 10th and 11th 2018.

Creative Arts Therapy Festival will also quadriple up as 4 different workshop facilitated by their experts listed below:

• Drama Therapy as the first Creative Arts Therapy; facilitated by Anshuma Kshetrapal – Drama Therapist
• Music Therapy as the second Creative Arts Therapy; facilitated by Nina Cherla – Music Therapist
• Creative Movement Therapy as the third Creative Arts Therapy; facilitated by Tripura Kashyap – Movement Therapist
• Visual Art Therapy as the fourth Creative Arts Therapy; facilitated by Charithra Ballal – Art Therapist

Creative Arts Therapy Module 1: Drama Therapy

Drama Therapy provides a reflexive methodology for engagement with complex psychological themes in a playful, indirect, safe and contained manner. Participants in the workshop by Anshuma Kshetrapal will be able to experience some theatre techniques, which will allow us to sample this process and provide a stimulus for personal reflection. We will explore how stories and drama may be used to encourage a connection with the collective and uncover psychological drives and motives. Through this experiential journey, we will be encouraged to engage with and share our own perspectives, reflections and thoughts in a creative and imaginative way.

Bio Profile: Anshuma Kshetrapal – Drama Therapist

As a practicing Drama and Movement Psychotherapist, Anshuma is registered with the British Association of Drama therapists. She also has an MA in Drama and Movement Therapy from the University of London, preceded by an MA in Psycho-social Clinical Studies from Ambedkar University in Delhi. She is on the advisory panel for the Creative Movement Therapy Association of India (CMTAI). In her role as course director, she has designed the curricula of CMTAI’s certificate and diploma courses in dance movement therapy and also teaches on these courses held in different cities. She has worked with varied age groups of clients with therapeutic needs in many settings, inclusive of clinics, hospitals, NGOs, schools and corporate companies. In her venture to spread awareness about the benefits of arts as psychotherapy, she established a dynamic organization ‘The Color of Grey Cells’. Anshuma is confident about imparting her knowledge of acting upon the mind-body nexus, using many different genres of arts.

Creative Arts Therapy Module 2: Music Therapy

Nina Cherla’s Music Therapy session seeks to transport you back to those early stages of language learning and development. We will experience how the non-verbal aspects of language enhance expression and help us connect with ourselves and with those around us. The communication of infants, whose linguistic ability is still at a nascent stage, relies fully on such non-verbal expressions as pitch, rhythm and dynamics that are at the root of language and music alike. It is also in infancy that one explores and learns about the fundamentals of communication such as turn-taking, listening and mirroring. The workshop will seek to highlight the use of music to facilitate non-verbal interaction through the use of voice, instruments and one’s own body. The experiential nature of the session will help us develop a hands-on appreciation for the significance of these elements both in music as well as the verbal language of our day-to-day lives.

Bio Profile: Nina Cherla – Music Therapist

Nina’s career began with her attaining an MA in Music Therapy at the University of South Wales. As a professional musician she has not only released two albums but has also performed in a wide variety of artistic spaces in Sweden, India and UK. She has in-depth as well as extensive experience in working with children with special needs in the public health center in Malmo, Sweden and in varied clinical settings. She facilitates music therapy sessions for children with special needs and has collaborated with the pediatric health practitioners at ‘Continua Kids’. She has worked at Asha Hospital (Hyderabad), Zeba Bashiruddin Centre for Healthy Aging, and Music as Therapy International working with the elderly affected by dementia. Also with an exclusive combination of proficiency in healthcare and the arts, Nina as the regional director of The Music Therapy Trust (Delhi) takes care of its operations – especially educational programs, placements and partnerships in India.

Creative Arts Therapy Module 3: Creative Movement Therapy

Tripura Kashyap’s session will flow through 4 significant aspects of Movement therapy – Movement building, Movement exploration, Movement expression and Verbal reflection. Movement experiences imbued with therapeutic-expressive-creative elements will lead towards enhancing the body-mind interlink and increase our capacity for self-expression and connecting to others. The experiential offering will consist of body preparation practices, movement games, dance studies and body relaxation techniques that unfold through solo and partner work, and dancing in triads or in clusters. These movement capsules will push participants to chisel their own body language, discover new facets of their personalities and re-discover the forgotten parts of their selves. The session is also useful for people who want to use movement with groups of adults or children that they work with.

Bio Profile: Tripura Kashyap – Creative Movement Therapist

Tripura is a Dance/Movement Educator and Therapist. She received many fellowships and scholarships from various institutions including Ashoka International Foundation and Indian Ministry of Culture for her seminal contribution to movement therapy and contemporary dance. She studied Dance Movement Therapy at Hancock Center, Wisconsin, USA and completed her Masters in Psychology. Later she pioneered Movement Therapy in India in 1990. Penguin (India) published her handbook on Creative Dance Therapy titled ‘My Body, My Wisdom’. Tripura founded Bangalore’s first contemporary dance group Apoorva Dance Theatre and later was a programming consultant for the Dance Pedagogy wing of the Attakkalari Center for Movement Arts . She was also the projects head of Bhoomika creative dance center in Delhi. She then co-founded Creative Movement Therapy Association of India and conceptualized India’s first movement therapy course. She teaches on various Dance and Expressive Art Therapies courses.

Creative Arts Therapy Module 4: Visual Art Therapy

In Charithra Ballal’s session, participants will explore how visual art practices can become a therapeutic tool to engage with self-expression & promote mental-emotional wellbeing. We will also experience how therapeutic art is used to express and reflect on inner conflicts from our day to day lives. Basic level art exercises will be offered to help understand how one does not need to be an artist to develop a deeper connection with oneself. It’s an invitation to experience simple acts like scribbling or doodling and how they can help understand one’s own internal processes and personal journey. Charithra likes to use everyday objects and elements of visual art, like, color, shape, form, and texture to evoke experiences and memories in participants. There will be group and individual activities where your art work can take you to spaces that your conscious mind cannot.

Bio Profile: Charithra Ballal – Visual Art Therapist

With an MSc in Clinical Psychology, Charithra has worked combining Psychotherapy with visual art in the areas of sexuality, mental health and well-being with people of different age groups in educational institutions and hospitals. She is currently pursuing an MA in Visual Art Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths University in England. She is a practitioner of Family-Systemic Constellations therapy in which she was trained at Ochre in Ireland and with the Spanda organization in Bengaluru. She wears many hats including that of being a Theater director, Reiki practitioner, Yoga teacher and a Researcher alongside being a Photographer. She is the founder of the Parija organization based in Bengaluru.

No prior experience in any of the art forms is required to attend this festival. All sessions are experiential – comfortable attire recommended!