Mon 12 Jan 2026 - By Catherine Warner, Tessa Watson and Claire Molyneux
Published in summer 2025, the new Curriculum Guidance for Music Therapy training programmes supports everyone involved in shaping the future of the profession. Whether you're developing, validating, or reviewing a course, this guidance document assures the quality of such courses.
It lays out core elements and identifies the conditions for the delivery of Music Therapy training programmes including curriculum content, staffing, environment, equipment, safety, ethics, inclusion, equity, and diversity.
Informed by the HCPC Standards of Proficiency, Standards of Education and Training and Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics, the guidance provides information to ensure that training programmes enable students to meet and maintain these standards. This helps ensure excellence and consistency.
DOWNLOAD THE GUIDANCE DOCUMENT HERE (note this link does not open a new page or window - the PDF document will immediately appear in your downloads)
Who is it for?
The guidance serves as a reference point for the following groups of people:
- Existing and future academic institutions, and professional educators involved in the training of Music Therapists
- Placement providers supporting practice education
- Therapists and supervisors of music therapy trainees
- Music therapy trainees
- Current and prospective employers looking to understand training standards
How was it developed?
This guidance started with the work of pioneers such as Tony Wigram and Helen Odell-Miller who led the initial liaison between the Association of Professional Music Therapists (APMT) and the Department of Health. Following much hard work and despite setbacks, in 1991 Tony Wigram and Rachel Darnley-Smith (then Chair of APMT) began a process of application for state registration which was completed in 1996.
To build on this development the original ‘Basic Module of Training’ document was produced by members of the APMT Training and Education Committee (TEC) in 1997. ‘Guidelines on Course Structure’ (2007) was produced through a process of consultation between members of the APMT TEC with the training committees of Art Psychotherapy and Dramatherapy. These documents included consultation with representatives from all UK Music Therapy training courses and other representatives from the professional body. Collaboration between training courses, now in the form of the Training and Education (TEC) Committee of BAMT, continues to thrive today.
The 2024 guidance was developed by current programme leaders of music therapy trainings. In 2022, in anticipation of the publication of the new 2023 HCPC Standards of Proficiency, a review of the curriculum guidance began. This was completed in 2024 and coincided with, and informed, a series of National Health Service England projects and focus groups relating to Art Psychotherapy, Dramatherapy and Music Therapy learning and teaching and practice. The revised curriculum guidance process was led by a TEC working group of Cathy Warner (then TEC Chair), Claire Molyneux and Tessa Watson.
The development process included valuable input from students from a range of programmes and BAMT Trustees, ensuring the guidance reflects real training experiences and a strong commitment to sustainability.
What are the key contemporary issues it addresses in training?
The 2024 document offers a flexible framework that supports the diverse approaches to Music Therapy training across the UK.
Key themes include:
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Plurality and flexibility of practice
- Equality, diversity, and inclusion as core values
- A renewed focus on sustainability
- The central role of music in therapeutic work
- Balancing online and in-person learning
- Emphasising self-care and reflective practice
- Encouraging experiential learning
- Promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and leadership development
The curriculum guidance is not a prescriptive guide for a training programme, but instead provides supporting principles for the delivery of music therapy programmes that can encompass the range of training perspectives across the UK.
Overall, it is about empowering educators and institutions to deliver training that is both rigorous and responsive to the evolving needs of the profession and as such will require regular review by the BAMT Training and Education Committee in consultation with the membership.