Abstract
In recent decades, design has transformed from a craft activity based mainly on manual skills and aesthetics to a strategic discipline that requires a systemic and multidisciplinary vision. Today’s designers need to cultivate soft skills such as creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration alongside traditional technical competencies. Dramatherapy, being an experiential, emotionally expressive, and conscious approach, proves to be a useful tool for acquiring these soft skills. Theatrical games, improvisation, storytelling, and dramatization techniques, such as role-playing and staging metaphors, enable design students to see different perspectives, participate in complex situations, and experience innovative ways of interaction. This contribution offers a glimpse into how dramatherapy can enhance design education, fostering empathy, facilitating the understanding of the potential users of a project, increasing creative potential and innovativeness, promoting communication and cooperation among students, while simultaneously developing greater self-confidence and emotional awareness. Ultimately, this paper explores how dramatherapy can be integrated into design education to train more well-rounded and aware professionals, capable of facing contemporary challenges.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.057
Citation
Ciravegna, E., Pagnocelli, G.,and Vacondio, E.(2025) Exploring the Potential of Dramatherapy in Designers’ Education, in Clemente, V., Gomes, G., Reis, M., Félix, S., Ala, S., Jones, D. (eds.), Learn X Design 2025, 22-24 September 2025, Aveiro, Portugal. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.057
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Full Paper
Exploring the Potential of Dramatherapy in Designers’ Education
In recent decades, design has transformed from a craft activity based mainly on manual skills and aesthetics to a strategic discipline that requires a systemic and multidisciplinary vision. Today’s designers need to cultivate soft skills such as creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration alongside traditional technical competencies. Dramatherapy, being an experiential, emotionally expressive, and conscious approach, proves to be a useful tool for acquiring these soft skills. Theatrical games, improvisation, storytelling, and dramatization techniques, such as role-playing and staging metaphors, enable design students to see different perspectives, participate in complex situations, and experience innovative ways of interaction. This contribution offers a glimpse into how dramatherapy can enhance design education, fostering empathy, facilitating the understanding of the potential users of a project, increasing creative potential and innovativeness, promoting communication and cooperation among students, while simultaneously developing greater self-confidence and emotional awareness. Ultimately, this paper explores how dramatherapy can be integrated into design education to train more well-rounded and aware professionals, capable of facing contemporary challenges.