Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) is in a unique position to offer an expressive arts therapy programme as it serves a wide range of professionals in the educational, health and social service sectors, and it is set up to deliver courses for adults already in practice. For many years, requests have been forthcoming for a part-time arts therapy course for those unable to pursue it full-time. Hence, our Graduate Diploma in Expressive Arts Therapy (GD XAT) programme offers not only a part-time and more flexible option, but also includes different art forms like play, art, mind and body work, narrative and storytelling. Through these in-depth opportunities, professionals could employ expressive arts therapy to combine psychology and the creative process to promote emotional growth and healing. This multi-arts approach uses our innate desire to create - via play, art, music, dance, poetry or any other artistic form - as a therapeutic tool to help initiate change.

Our GD XAT creates new connections with emerging Asian models of expressive arts therapy in India and Hong Kong. It presents a psychological approach that is humanistic in orientation. As a Graduate Diploma, graduates will not meet the requirements for full registration as an expressive arts therapist or qualify them to practise as therapists. However, it will form the basis for the eventual development of a full masters programme which will qualify graduates to register as International Expressive Arts Therapists with IEATA (International Expressive Arts Therapy Association) that is based in the US. Graduates from GD XAT should be eligible to register as Registered Expressive Arts Consultant/Educator (REACE) with IEATA and when they progress to the masters programme with the requisite clinical hours and supervision, they will then be eligible to be Registered Expressive Arts Therapists (REAT).