Expressive Music Therapy: Empowering Engaged Citizens and Communities

Abstract

With foundations in deep ecology and ecopsychology, ecological expressive arts therapy offers individuals and communities support to give voice to disenfranchised concerns about issues such as the environment and reconciliation. Expressive music therapy can reconnect voices to hearts, and hands to drums, and words to the powerfully authentic songs of change. This paper describes the theoretical underpinnings of Ecological Expressive Arts Therapy, within a community arts context. The second section of the paper describes the experiential processes of a workshop presented at the Education and Social Change Conference held at University of Technology Sydney in December 2000.