Interview: Leaders at Minding Creative Minds talk about their new Creative Arts Therapies service

It’s safe to say that the creative industries are a risky business. Music, art, theatre and dance have long been perceived as challenging professions, known for their highly competitive job markets, overly critical public reception and seemingly unattainable standards. While many find ways to flourish in the arts, it’s rare to find someone capable of navigating the extreme high and lows of the creative world without a helping hand.

Minding Creative Minds, a support service for the Irish creative sector, has made it their mission to provide local artists with the tools they need to fully embrace their talents and ambitions. Following a period of phenomenal growth, Minding Creative Minds (MCM) has launched a brand new Creative Arts Therapies pilot service, which will allow members of the creative community to participate in a free 12-week music, art, dance or drama therapy programme.

“The overall ambition of Minding Creative Minds is to support people who work in the arts in every aspect of their lives,” says MCM director and CAT project lead Ann Marie Shields. “It's meant to help people along and keep them on a good track.”

Now in its fourth year, MCM has established a reputation as the country’s leading support organisation for Irish creatives, whether based in Ireland or overseas. 2023 saw significant growth in the organisation’s 24-hour counselling programme, facilitating over 2,000 service hours and adding specialist trauma counselling to its list of offerings. MCM’s career mentoring programme, launched back in 2021, has achieved over 1,000 hours of one-on-one mentorship in the past year and has organised a host of online and in-person masterclasses with over 14,000 attending the 50-plus online workshops, alone.

MCM’s pattern of growth continues with the addition of Creative Arts Therapies (CAT) to its list of free and confidential services, made possible due to the continued support of Minister Catherine Martin and The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

“The Creative Arts Therapies is a natural progression of the services we already provide and continue to provide,” Shields explains. “Besides counselling and specialist trauma and abuse services, we also have legal assistance, financial assistance, and HR. We have career guidance, career mentoring, and we do regular meetups. We also host a lot of masterclasses in various areas, and we have a new career clinic that's in pilot phase two.”

The CAT programme will consist of 12 one-on-one sessions with a qualified therapist who specialises in one of the four offered modalities: music therapy, art therapy, dance-movement therapy and drama therapy.

“What MCM is doing - providing a therapeutic language through the arts - is so appropriate and meaningful because these are people who are working within the creative industry, so they've got creative minds and are used to engaging through the arts,” says Creative Arts Therapy Supervisor and neurologic music therapist Rebecca O’Connor. “It's not about teaching people how to play an instrument or draw or dance, but about using the arts for self-discovery and self-expression.”

While MCM’s services are geared towards those directly involved in the Irish creative sector, O’Connor has spent her career as a music therapist working with a diverse range of clients, from newborn babies and neurodivergent children to patients with dementia, brain injuries or mental health challenges.

Music therapy practices are typically composed of four central methods: recreation, which involves learning to play music that already exists; composition, which encourages clients to create new music; improvisation, which allows clients to use instruments creatively and without guidelines; and reception, which involves passive listening and analysis. Each method has a specific impact on clients. While “recreation” may be the preferred approach for patients with Alzheimer's or dementia because of the strong relationship between music-making and memory, for example, “composition” may have a greater impact on those struggling with self-expression since it allows them to communicate musically rather than verbally.

“It's that whole concept, you know, that when words fail, music speaks,” O’Connor says. “If you can't express how you're feeling, it's so much more beneficial to do it through art, especially when you're in the presence of a qualified professional who is able to help you interpret and channel those different art forms.”

By engaging clients in a variety of activities such as improvisation, songwriting, lyric analysis or music and movement, music therapists can tailor their practice to the needs of each patient, individualising sessions based on their client’s preferences and experience with music, which ranges from years of training to little or none at all.

Regardless of a person’s innate musicality, the human brain is naturally wired to respond to pleasurable music. According to a 2022 study by Psyche Loui, a creative cognition professor and director of the Music, Imaging, and Neural Dynamics Laboratory at Northeastern University in Boston, regular music listening increases functional connectivity between auditory systems and the medial prefrontal cortex, improving memory, cognition and executive function.

“We looked at older adults before and after eight weeks of working with a music therapist for a music-based intervention,” said Loui in an interview. “Over those weeks, they listened to self-selected music for an hour a day, and then, before and after those eight weeks, we scanned their brain. What we saw is that the auditory cortex became more connected to the reward centres of the brain.”

According to O’Connor, the simple act of playing an instrument can have incredible neurological benefits, both in a therapeutic and recreational setting, because it can stimulate and engage more areas of the brain than other activities.

“Imagine playing the violin, for example,” O’Connor explains. “You’re reading, which uses cognitive skills. You’re also using the memory stores of the brain because you’re triggering memories and you’re using your motor cortex because you’re actually playing the violin. All of that then triggers an emotional response.”

Music can be used to accomplish any number of long term or short term goals, from emotional healing to physical recovery. At MCM, therapists work with clients early on to identify clear goals that can be accomplished within their 12-week time frame.

“We're looking at issues that have a strong beginning, middle and end period with regards to the intervention plan, so that it can be safely handled in a 12 week period,” says Shields. “We've had to do a lot of thinking around that piece to ensure that we have really strong guidelines for both the client and the therapists.”

For this reason, MCM has a thorough application process that all potential arts therapy clients must adhere to before diving into one on one sessions. After filling out a simple application form, clients will meet with the programme’s creative arts therapy coordinator to discuss which of the four modalities will be the most effective based on their strengths and goals. From there, clients will begin their individual therapy sessions with an online meeting via telehealth, where they can outline what they hope to achieve within the allotted time frame. The following 11 meetings would be in person, with various check-in points along the way to ensure that the client’s goals are being met.

“When the pilot phase started last month, we immediately were inundated with applications,” says Shields. “It really confirmed our own belief that there is a real need for it...I think people are lifted just by engaging in the arts. They bring us joy.That's why this programme is so important, because we are working through mediums of joy.”

You can register your interest for Minding Creative Minds' Creative Arts Therapies, and find further information, here.

Details of all MCM's services – including counselling, legal assistance, financial assistance, career guidance, and more – can been be found at mindingcreativeminds.ie

Minding Creative Minds' 24/7 Dedicated Phone Line:

ROI: 1800 814 244
NI/UK: 0800 0903677
International: +353 1 518 0277