About

Hibernia College offers a growing range of shorter and longer courses for personal and professional development. Its courses share a common foundation, an anthroposophical understanding of health, personal development and art.

Two of its longer courses are full professional trainings for art therapy and for  rhythmical massage.

The shorter courses can be taken as introductions to the above longer trainings, or purely for personal development or in order to obtain a general orientation into the anthroposophical approach to health care. These can be of benefit both for individuals without a professional health care training as well as for those with a completed training wishing for further professional development.

The teachers at Hibernia are predominantly practicing health care professionals.

Recognition for Hibernia Art Therapy Training

The City and Guilds has awarded the College Delegated Authority Status. Students completing the Postgraduate Art Therapy Course will receive City and Guilds Masters Level 7 Award in Art Therapy.

The name Hibernia derives from an ancient mystery school whose influence spread over Ireland and Britain. Pupils of this school are reported to have gone through an ‘inner’ training in which they experienced what could arise out of apparently irreconcilable opposites. One of these experiences was focused on what we would now call the polarity of ‘Science and Art‘.

Today the dynamic interaction of art and science is seen as a fundamental in the art therapy training and the training in rhythmical massage.

Traditionally natural scientific methodology has been used to overcome the risk of error inherent in subjective experience. However the methods developed tend to bypass human experience.

Central to Rudolf Steiner’s ‘Spiritual Science’ is the recognition of the dangers of error in subjective experience, but also that a reflective path of self-knowledge accompanied by the active inner training can potentially overcome these risks.

The teaching at Hibernia has a strong experiential quality. It includes the teaching of practical skills such as painting, drawing, modelling or the practical skills of rhythmical massage; but also the cognitive skills of reflecting and digesting intellectual content. Most of the subject’s have a strong action research quality in their teaching.

All the trainings have a dynamic emphasis on personal self-development underlying the skills. This is essential for a research method in which the researcher him or herself is central to the process. For work as a health professional the personal qualities of the therapist is an essential part of the therapeutic process.

Hibernia is housed in a Victorian purpose-built ‘School for Science and Art’ in the centre of Stroud. The facilities include 3 large art studios, a small studio and library. The building also houses a Waldorf Inspired College, whose facilities are made available for special events. The Lansdown Pottery, another partner project, offering training in pottery, as well as work experience for adults with special needs.