Music Therapy and Dramatherapy with Children in Educational and other Settings

Dates: 30 November - 1 December 2012
Venue: Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Keynote Speakers: Clare Flower, Dr Phil Jones

Music Therapy and Dramatherapy with Children in Educational and other Settings is one of the first conferences to bring together music therapists and dramatherapists interested in working with children. We are inviting speakers to reflect particularly on:

• How educational settings affect therapeutic work with children
• How music and drama may be combined to work therapeutically with children

However, we also encourage proposals on any aspect of music therapy and/or dramatherapy with children.

Full conference information

Music and Transcendence

Date: 29 November 2011
Times: 09:00 - 21:30
Venue: Cambridge Union Society, 9a Bridge Street, Cambridge, CB2 1UB

Keynote speakers: Professor Roger Scruton; Professor Bruce Ellis Benson; Professor Christopher Page

This interdisciplinary conference will explore the ways in which music relates to transcendence. Papers will consider the ways in which music relates to infinite and 'ultimate' meaning as well as the ways in which music enables the creation of meaning and fulfilment within an 'immanent' frame.

More information on the 'Music and Transcendence' conference.

The Music of Music Therapy

Dates: 26-27 February 2010
Times: 13.00 (Friday) - 17.30 (Saturday)
Venue: Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Keynote speakers: Rachel Darnley-Smith, University of Durham; Mercédès Pavlicevic PhD, Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy

Discussions of the clinical process in music therapy have in common their recognition of the value of music as part, or all, of the means of emotional communication and therapeutic exchange. On that basis, music therapists have turned in addition to theoretical ideas drawn from, or held in common with, other therapeutic traditions, such as psychoanalysis or developmental psychology, or from theories related to specific pathologies or client groups.

At this conference we turned our attention to the nature of the music itself.

More information on 'The Music of Music Therapy' conference.

Extreme: Visual Representation and the Body

Date: Thursday 25 and Friday 26 June 2009
Venue: Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Keynote speakers: Professor Lisa Coulthard (University of British Columbia); Dr Dominic Johnson (Queen Mary, University of London)

This interdisciplinary event explored the notion of the extreme in visual representations of the body in the context of both critical theories and artistic practices.

More information on the 'Extreme: Visual Representation and the Body' conference.

Sarah Kane: A Reassessment

Date: Saturday 16 February 2008
Time: 10.00-19.00
Venue: Judith E Wilson Drama Studio

Sarah Kane's plays are performed all over the world; books and articles on her work are starting to appear; she is a standard reference for contemporary theatre historians and young theatre makers. But which Sarah Kane do these histories construct? What aspects of her work have we forgotten, obscured or denied? What are the continuities and discontinuities between Kane, her predecessors and her contemporaries? Thirteen years on from Blasted's debut at the Royal Court, this conference was an opportunity to revisit Kane's work and place it in a new critical light.

More information on the 'Sarah Kane: A Reassessment' conference.

Trauma: Current Thinking and Practice in Music Therapy

Date: 23-24 November 2007
Venue: Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Keynote Speaker: Dr Julie Sutton

Increasingly, trauma is being recognised as the source of a wide range of pathologies and manifestations of psychological distress. At this conference, music therapists from the UK, Israel, Slovenia and Germany presented work with people who had been traumatised as a result of a range of experiences including war and conflict, abuse, disability, maternal separation and depression and brain injury.

More information on the 'Trauma: Current Thinking and Practice in Music Therapy' conference.