MA Therapies 30/15 anniversary
Celebrating 30 years of MA Music Therapy and 15 years of MA Dramatherapy at ARU
Since its inception, ARU’s MA Music Therapy — the first ever music therapy degree in the UK — has attracted trainees from all over the world, with accreditation from the HCPC ensuring they’re professionally qualified to practice as soon as they graduate.
Its global reach has gone far beyond existing areas of music therapy practice, with many graduates establishing, and becoming ambassadors for, the discipline in their own countries. Jamal Glynn graduated as the first ever music therapist to use the steelpan as primary instrument and within three weeks of returning to Trinidad, was assigned to work with their Ministry of Health. Amanda Lee from Taiwan has been raising awareness of music therapy in the country since graduating.
15 years after establishing our MA Music Therapy we added the MA Dramatherapy to our clinical portfolio, which continued this tradition of global influence with Charlee Tsai who initially gained dramatherapy practice experience in London before returning to Taiwan to promote the discipline.
To mark this double milestone, a special event was held on the ARU Cambridge campus with more than 150 alumni, staff, current trainees, placement providers and stakeholders coming together to celebrate. A Storymap (below) was also created to explore and celebrate a sample of the working lives of our alumni across the globe.
In addition to the featured alumni ARU therapists have gone on to practice and train others in Cyprus Taiwan, Singapore, United States, Puerto Rico, Cayman Islands, Slovenia, Malaysia and South Africa.
Deputy Head of School for Therapies Claire Molyneux, herself an ARU alumnus, has worked as a music therapist in New Zealand as well as being Head of Clinical Services at the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre, Auckland.
In 2016 MA Music Therapy course founder Professor Helen Odell-Miller was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List for services to music therapy, which was followed up in 2024 with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Association for Music Therapy (BAMT).
