MSc Music Therapy

Year One

• Practice-based Learning 1 (40 credits): This practice-based learning module is central to the course and designed to support you in the development of your understanding of the Music Therapy process. The module begins with pre-practice education to prepare you for practice-based learning. On-site practice-based learning continues one day/week. You will participate in regular supervision with the Practice Educator, in weekly supervision seminars facilitated by the group supervisor at QMU and learn together with peers. You will develop professional and therapeutic skills and be able to articulate the importance and influence of the socio-political context on the lives of individuals, groups and communities. You will present and explore ongoing work pertaining to practice-based learning within the context of the confidential supervision seminars where you will be supported in facilitating therapeutic relationships with your clients and encouraged to appreciate multiple views of the clients’ needs and context. Theory and inter-professional practice will be linked to this module through the others that run concurrently.
• Music Therapy Resources (30 credits): Through experiential learning with peers, including discussions, workshops and self-led engagement, you will develop an understanding of your own creative process and how this relates to music therapy practice and research. You will build on the musical and interpersonal resources they already have, critically consider the therapeutic use of sound, music and improvisation in different contexts and with different persons, and expand your understanding of musical form, and expression through interactions with others. As part of this module, you will engage in learning related to one-to-one and group facilitation, in addition to a process group, which offers the opportunity to explore ways of relating and critically reflect on the interpersonal experience of participating in a group.
• Arts Therapies Studies 1 (30 credits): This module facilitates you to develop a critical understanding of, and engagement with, key developmental and relational perspectives which underpin and inform the practice of arts therapies within a person-centered and psychodynamically-informed framework. There is also a defined unit that leads you through a series of lectures and workshops towards the Independent Academic Project module in Year Two.

Year Two

• Practice-based Learning 2 (40 credits): This second practice-based learning module is central to the course and designed to support you in the development of your understanding of the Music Therapy process, involving direct contact with service users in a different setting to first year. On-site practice-based learning is two days/week throughout the year. You will participate in regular supervision with the Practice Educator, in weekly supervision seminars facilitated by the group supervisor at QMU and learn together with peers.
• Arts Therapies Studies 2 (20 credits): This module aims to enable you to integrate theoretical underpinnings of the arts therapies (art/music/drama) within a diversity of settings. You will be invited to explore a breadth of approaches to understanding therapeutic practices, organisational dynamics, wider determinants of health and wellbeing, power differentials within practice, and unconscious ways of being, through a critical lens. The module will consist of lectures and participatory workshops (with persons with professional and lived experience expertise) alongside peer-assisted learning across the arts therapies and in modality specific groups. You will dialogue with multiple perspectives through arts-based responses and ongoing critical reflections, encouraging creative imaginings to be experienced as transformative social acts.
• Independent Academic Project (40 credits): This module enables you to consolidate your learning throughout the course and apply the skills of research and inquiry by undertaking an evidence-informed piece of work. You will identify and explore an area of academic, personal or professional relevance, contributing new insights and advancing understanding within music therapy. Guided by a project supervisor through individual and group tutorials, you will produce a project that demonstrates academic rigour, creativity, independence, critical analysis, and reflective practice.