Speech School amwort turns 10
After the closure of two schools there was no speech training left in Dornach. Then, ten years ago now, amwort was founded.
Amwort started as a full-time training, then turned part-time and is now again one of the full-time trainings registered by the International Association of Speech Schools within the Section for the Performing Arts. It has presently 40 students.
The artistic training is the heart of the School’s curriculum; the therapeutic speech training leads to a qualification as art therapist specialized in speech and drama (in Switzerland state-recognized); further training for speech therapists in schools was added in November 2018, and from August 2019 there will be a modular further training course in logopaedic therapy. Every student has one one-to-one lesson per week to enhance individual development. The length of the training depends on previous experience and qualifications.
The highlights in the study year are performances by all students and their individual graduation programmes. The work of the speech chorus is impressive because it sounds like one voice. Presentations, such as on biographies of poets, individual sounds, anthroposophical aspects of speech and speech development, educational or therapeutic topics, and the topics chosen by students for their thesis, contribute to the lesson content. Amwort graduates have gone on to work in Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Estonia, the US and South Africa.
Faculty members Agnes Zehnter, Monika Gasser, Kirstin Kaiser and Dietrich von Bonin are concerned about the future of this art because student numbers are low worldwide.
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