Executive Director Sibel Golden interviewed by Martha McCaughey
In this Picture – Sibel Golden with some members of the staff and Board
Martha: What is your Institute’s/Program’s vision?
Sibel: When we started our vision was primarily to provide continuing education for clinicians through the lens of expressive arts therapy, and we definitely did that, and we continue to do that. We added a 10-month professional training certificate program in expressive arts, and we’re in our 6th year! The vision was to make this work accessible, to make this approach, this way of bringing the arts into therapy accessible for people who have an interest in it and who are curious and want some continuing education. But also, for the folks who have joined us in the training program, there aren’t that many ways to do that without going back to graduate school. So, I think we found a nice opportunity for people who want to become expressive arts therapists but who already have a Master’s degree or who wanted to do a Master’s program that was affordable and then come and do our training. We try to keep that affordable, too.
Martha: Is your programming open to the public as well as students?
Sibel: Actually, that expands on what our vision is becoming because we do work with therapists, social workers, and counselors, but also educators, and we have been expanding over the last few years and would like to do more of that. We do have a couple of programs now. Everything is open to the public but not everyone cares about getting continuing education credits or clock hours. We do have a program that is monthly that is no charge—Art & Meditation, which is a little over an hour of art and creative process time. There’s music, there’s a poetry offering. That’s open to everyone, and we want to do more workshops and events that are not solely focused on continuing education, so we’re moving in that direction, too.
Martha: Are the monthly Art & Meditation sessions online and open to anyone? How could the IEATA members sign up?
Sibel: Yes, we do one Friday a month, online, so if you go on the website, you’ll see all the dates there. Even though it’s free, you do need to register to Zoom in.
Martha: What are your training programs levels and certification (and are they online, f2f, or both)?
Sibel: We started doing our training program all in person and then, like so many other organizations, had to move to online for the last couple of years. But we are really excited that we’re going to move back into hybrid, so it will be available both just online and then also as a hybrid program where people can come and also do some of the work online. The training is for anyone who has either completed a master’s degree in the therapy/counseling/social work field or is at the internship stage of their program. However, we are also planning on offering an alternative track to non-clinicians because there are so many people who are interested in this work and who want to take our program. We want to make that available as well.
Martha: About how many students go through your programs per year?
Sibel: It’s grown through the years. We have our training program capped at 25 right now. With that combined with the workshops, we have a few hundred people go through a variety of offerings each year. And we’ve purposely kept things on the smaller side so we can have workshops that are more hands-on, more interactive–just a smaller learning community, which has been a value of ours.
Martha: Are you open to new mentoring opportunities?
Sibel: We offer REAT supervision, and that is a way that we mentor people who are wanting to go for their registration as an expressive arts therapist. We are already doing some mentoring and wanting to grow that program. Right now, we have monthly opportunities for group supervision, and then we do have some people who are available for individual supervision. But we’re always open to other mentoring opportunities. I field many, many questions that come through our email about what expressive arts is, the difference between going for the REAT and the REACE, how people can get more information, or what direction should they go in. So, I do a lot of informal mentoring as well.
Martha: What kinds of spaces do you have, or will you have, both in person and online?
Sibel: Our online workshops are usually capped between 20 and 25 to have that nicer feeling of community as much as we can create that. And I’m very excited because we’re actively looking at new spaces. We had a really beautiful space in downtown Seattle that we gave up during the pandemic, and now we’re looking for our new physical home. And I’m super excited about the possibilities of having that space again and being able to offer things on site and continuing to offer a meaningful learning space online as well.
Martha: What would you say makes your program distinct? What are your points of pride?
Sibel: I think that our program is distinct because our intention has always been to begin the ripples in a pond or to plant a seed for people, and to make this work as exciting as I and my colleagues think it is. I think it’s unique because we bring so much excitement to our programs as well as the message that “Yes, you can do this!” This is vital, important, meaningful work and we want to get that out into our community, and now communities all over the country, as best as we can. And we really value supporting anybody who comes through to try to make that happen. I think also, while we don’t do a lot of direct service, we do have some outreach that we offer. We’re a nonprofit, which we value also, and so we’ve done things in the community and will continue to do that—everything from doing a workshop with Seattle Art Museum to a mandated dual-diagnosis men’s group downtown to working with primary educators at a local synagogue. Where there is a need, we really try to meet it. Anybody who is interested in bringing this work into their lives, we’re interested in helping them try to do that. So that’s a point of pride. We offer both regular and BIPOC scholarships for our training program, and BIPOC scholarships for our workshops. We’ve grown, exponentially, in the past few years. We want to offer so much., and there is so much interest and so much need for EXA to be out in the world! We have tons of ideas!
Martha: What sorts of social media outreach do you engage in?
Sibel: We have activity on Facebook, on Instagram, and we do have a Pinterest account also. We’re also on LinkedIn.
You can find us at the following pages –
Website: www.seattlearttherapy.org
Instagram: northwestcreativeandexpressiveartsinstitute
Pinterest: https://pin.it/32dkjBK
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nw-creative-expressive-arts-institute/
Educational Resources Connection 