Ep 19 Liz Coombes

Liz Coombes is the course leader of the MA Music Therapy
course at the University of South Wales, Newport. Since
qualifying as a Music Therapist in 2000 following a BMus degree
at Royal Holloway College, University of London, she has
specialised in working with children and young people with
emotional and behavioural difficulties as well as asylum seekers
and refugees. She uses psychodynamic thinking to underpin her
work and utilises her considerable experience in community
music-making. She has worked on skill-sharing therapeutic music
projects since 2009 in Palestine, and in the UK. She has a
particular interest in how sharing these skills with
non-musicians such as teachers, social workers and carers can
enrich their professional practice. She has recently completed
her training in Guided Imagery in Music.


We talked about Liz’s experience as a community musician, how
this links to her music therapy work, what skills music
therapists need to develop in training, and working
cross-culturally. 


Coombes, E. (2011, February). Project Bethlehem-Training
educators and health workers in the therapeutic use of music in
the West Bank. In Voices: A World Forum for Music
Therapy (Vol. 11, No. 1).


Coombes, E., & Tombs-Katz, M. (2015). Interactive therapeutic
music skill-sharing in the West Bank: An evaluation report of
project Beit Sahour. Approaches: An Interdisciplinary
Journal of Music Therapy, 9, 67-79.