Very interactive and experiential workshop.

Really enjoyed it and found it very useful.

Course Description

3 hour online course

Therapeutic Messy Play can be summed up in one word – SPLODGE!  Just as childbirth itself is a messy, slimy and sticky process, so infants need to be able to explore mess before they can move towards form.

                             From Mess to Form

                             From Chaos to Order

The world started in chaos and darkness and the human infant starts in slimy water and darkness!  The journey through messy play takes infants into making and creating with dough.  This is delayed if we don’t allow the messy stage first.  Many children are experiencing life as a mess with lack of attachment, unpredictable day-to-day activities, confusing relationships.  Messy play gives them a means of externalising this mess as they commence their healing journey through play.

This workshop gives us our own journey through messy play  to the joy of creation, from which we will understand the basis of Infant Mental Health.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will have an opportunity to:

• Understand the basis of messy play
• Grasp the skills and resources for messy play
• Integrate a developmental framework which includes messy play
• Practice the journey from mess to form/chaos to order
• Relax with the mess rather than being stressed
• Experience mess as a journey not a state

Date and Time

Live course will be run online on the following dates:

Wednesday 25th June 2025, 5pm - 8pm AEST

or

Wednesday 17th September 2025, 5pm - 8pm AEST

Professor Sue Jennings PhD is an anthropologist, therapist, performer, and author. She is Senior Research Fellow, The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham Distinguished Scholar, University of the Witwatersrand, Honorary Fellow of the University of Roehampton, and Professor of Play - awarded by the European Federation of Dramatherapy. She has been a pioneer of Dramatherapy and Play Therapy in the UK and overseas. Professor Jennings' paradigm ‘embodiment-projection-role’ is integrated into education and therapy world-wide. Having worked as a clinician in psychiatry, forensic settings and special education, she has focussed her recent practice and research on early years development and developed ‘Neuro-Dramatic-Play’ as a basis for attachment and empathy. She emphasises the importance of ‘play from conception’ for healthy emotional and social growth. Her doctoral fieldwork was with a tribal community in the Malaysian rain forest, which she believes underpins all her childhood theory and therapy. Sue is a prolific author with over fifty publications on theory and application to her name. She believes passionately in ‘playing for peace’ with a rule of ‘no guns in the playroom’.

Cost

$200

Participant Preparation

Please have with you a chocolate instant pudding mix; bowl, spoon and water; some ice cubes; eco-wipes and a face cloth; art materials of your choice.

Please note, this is a LIVE and INTERACTIVE online training event. We don't record this.