Therapy
When Ar.Co first opens its door to the public in 1973, one of the Open Courses that integrates the first semester is titled “Creative Communication” and is oriented by the social anthropologist and group therapy and psychodrama specialist Sue Jennings. In the next year, Maria Fux introduces dancetherapy in the course “Creative Body Expression”. Jennings had described her course on the information sheet as being “based on non-verbal means of expression, using movement, dance, the visual arts, sound and music. It does not aim at being an end in itself, but a way of stimulating ideas and techniques.” When seen as a whole, Ar.Co’s eminently practical training could be characterized along the same lines. Oriented group exercise is aimed, before anything else, at removing blockages and transforming the participants’ structure of capacities. What Ar.Co’s “alternative” school program seems to be saying is that, without this transformation, there is no real acquiring of profissional skills and no education to speak of. Whenever Ar.Co defines its objectives and competencies, the therapeutic dimension in art training is never considered in an articulated, systematic or scientific manner. This doesn’t stop the school from having numerous opportunities to witness, throughout its history, the therapeutic value of an artistic education centred in practice. In fact, the school prides itself for the high levels of integration achieved with several types of “dysfunctional cases”, many of which with a history of resistance to traditional clinical therapies.
-
Creative Communication. Open Course by Sue Jennings. Ar.Co, Lisbon. March 1973.
-
Creative Communication. Open Course by Sue Jennings. Ar.Co, Lisbon. March 1973.
-
Creative Communication. Open Course by Sue Jennings. Ar.Co, Lisbon. March 1973.
-
Open Course "Creative Body Expression", aria Fux, 1974.
-
Intensive TRF Courses. Ar.Co, 1986.
-
Za-Zen, a Meditation Open Day, 1986.
