Expressive Arts Therapy Certificate
Student stories and a complete guide to Meridian University's Expressive Arts Therapy Certificate: what you'll study, how long it takes, and where creative practice can lead.
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Student stories and a complete guide to Meridian University's Expressive Arts Therapy Certificate: what you'll study, how long it takes, and where creative practice can lead.
Program Overview
The Expressive Arts Therapy Certificate is a program offered through Meridian University's Center for Transformative Learning. Designed for professionals who want to integrate multiple creative modalities into therapeutic practice, the certificate draws on Meridian's graduate curriculum in expressive and movement arts to build a comprehensive foundation in expressive arts approaches to healing and transformation.
Expressive Arts Therapy is an integrative approach that draws on visual arts, music, movement, drama, poetry, and creative writing to support healing, personal growth, and social change. The field emphasizes the interplay between artistic mediums, recognizing that shifting between modalities can deepen the therapeutic process and open new pathways for expression and insight. Coursework engages practices and topics including body metaphors, art as therapy, embodiment, psychodrama, and historical trauma, with sample courses such as Myth, Ritual, and Expressive Arts; The Poetic Body; and Expressive Arts in Therapy.
Certificate participants take the same rigorous, faculty-led courses that graduate students experience, drawn from the anchor and other parts of Meridian's curriculum offered during their enrollment. Rooted in the understanding that creativity is a fundamental human capacity for meaning-making, practitioners in this field work across settings including healthcare, education, coaching, community development, and organizational consulting.
Hear from Meridian student, Alison D., a PhD in Psychology student with a background as a professional dancer in New York City and Montreal. She talks about wanting to bring dance to more people, building a graduate path around expressive arts, and learning to use movement, drawing, and poetry with others.
Students and alumni describe how art, movement, and imagination shape their learning at Meridian.
"I've always wanted to fuse dance and Psychology. I have choice in how I utilize therapy, how I utilize expressive arts, and in how I want to help people. My goal after Meridian is to be an expressive arts therapist, and I feel like Meridian has really prepared me for that."
"Through personal development as well as soul searching, I decided that I wanted to be able to use dance to go to more people. It feels like I got to choose and personalize a graduate program for myself, exactly what I wanted to do. That in itself just feels exciting."
"The program's curriculum, which emphasizes expression through ritual, imagination, and creativity within the complexities and challenges of community-making, invited the awakening of my soul. This experience has opened my heart, freed my spirit, and allowed me to be more effective in my work as a healer."
Program Pillars
Meridian's Expressive Arts Therapy Certificate combines graduate-level coursework with intermodal creative practice, completed in 6 to 12 months.
Coursework draws on visual arts, music, movement, drama, poetry, and creative writing, exploring how shifting between modalities deepens the therapeutic process and opens new pathways for expression and insight.
Coursework engages practices including body metaphors, psychodrama, embodiment, and art as therapy, giving participants direct experience with the intermodal methods that define the field.
Rooted in creativity as a fundamental human capacity for meaning-making, the certificate prepares participants to bring expressive arts into healthcare, coaching, education, community development, and employee wellness.
Find clear, practical information here
A 16-credit program offered by Meridian University that provides a comprehensive foundation in Somatic Psychology, with rigorous, faculty-led coursework drawn from the graduate curriculum.
As few as 6 months taking 8 credits per quarter, or up to 12 months taking 4 credits per quarter. Each course is 4 credits, and the certificate requires four courses in total.
Tuition is $476 per credit, and the total cost for the 16-credit certificate is $7,616.
Yes. Credits earned in the certificate may be applied toward a Meridian University graduate degree program, as applicable, so certificate work can become the start of further graduate study.
Need more information about the certificate?
Connect with Meridian's team to learn more about the Expressive Arts Therapy Certificate, ask questions, or start your application.