API Introductory Course (India)

Our one year course on Arts Practices for Inclusion (API) looks at synergies between art forms, therapy and inclusion. Therapy happens through the arts opening the doors to social and emotional communication between special needs/ vulnerable groups and mainstream populations. Inclusion takes therapy to its logical conclusion when minorities find there is love and acceptance for them in majority spaces and vice versa. The role of the facilitator becomes not just one to facilitate, but to hand hold in finding and creating inclusive spaces. The arts have a wonderful way of doing this. No other course in India offers this pedagogy and practice.

Many of the applicants who expressed an interest in taking the one-year course also enquired about shorter workshop-based trainings in API. We saw this as an opportunity to offer short trainings such that prospective students can have an experience of API given that it is a first of its kind training. This will also allow organizations who are looking at anchoring API to understand the format of inclusion and therapy through artistic skills.

We are offering a two and a half day training programme on the ‘Overview of Arts Practices in Learning, Therapy and Inclusion that would provide a platform to come together and experience the magic of Visual Arts, Movement, Drama, Play and Music. This programme is open to students, psychologists, counsellors, professionals, educators, health care workers who are interested in understanding the role of multi arts in learning and promoting wellbeing in beneficiaries. 

The course does not delve deeply into facilitating this therapy and inclusion work yourself. That component is taught with rigor in our one-year course.The course is population neutral as are the arts practices that are applied in the course.

Our first two batches saw participants from different social inclusion fields like arts and therapy interventions with children and adults with learning disabilities, special needs, victims of sexual abuse and other at risk and vulnerable populations, physiotherapy, arts therapy, data science, complementary health therapies and health promotion come together to learn about the practice of arts to facilitate social inclusion.

 Write to us at snehadhara.foundation@gmail.com to know more or to get a call back.