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Presentations will enable us to reflect on how ������ϲʿ��������¼s attend to context and relationship, meeting challenges creatively and developing new, exciting ways of working. Making art across the day will deepen and enrich our thinking, drawing out the links to practice to inform questions and discussion.

We will see how taking account of context and relationship can also help us to hold onto what is core about our practice and to maintain integrity; guiding the way we incorporate research, different ideas, and use new opportunities on the horizon.

The day will offer inspiration and grounded, critical reflection to enable participants to feel better equipped to innovate – safely, effectively and with integrity – enhancing art therapy practice in service of our clients and the communities we support.

Early booking recommended!

As this is an in-person event, this year’s conference has a limited number of tickets available. We recommend you book early to avoid disappointment.

Booking for this event will close Friday 18 October 2024 at 10am.

Presenters

Keynote speaker Dr Lynn Kapitan

Lynn Kapitan, PhD, ATR-BC, HLM is a Professor Emerit and former Director of Graduate and Doctoral Art Therapy at Mount Mary University (USA). Former Executive Editor of Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association and Past President of the American Art Therapy Association, she was awarded its highest honour for her contributions to the advancement of art therapy.

In this conference opening, Dr Lynn Kapitan will explore how ������ϲʿ��������¼s are finding their grounding in environments of continual disturbance, tension, and disorienting complexity, and reconfiguring practice as innovative pathways of connection, transformation, and resiliency.

Dr Jed Jerwood

Dr Jed Jerwood (PhD) is a principal art psychotherapist at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust and Honorary Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham.

Dr Jed Jerwood will present his work on the , an award-winning, internationally acclaimed model of advance care planning.

Jason Wilsher-Mills

is an artist. His work celebrates disability, his northern working-class heritage and popular culture through cutting edge technologies and brightly coloured, largescale humorous, but challenging art.

Jason was awarded the Adam Reynolds Award  by SHAPE Arts and has exhibited around the world, including this years Venice Biennale. Jason also has an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, ‘Jason and the Adventure of 254’, which will be open during the conference.

Jason’s exhibition, ‘ is all about his experiences of becoming disabled as a child. It is inspired by the objects from Wellcome Collection’s anatomical collections, which triggered memories of his own hospitalisation during childhood. The exhibition installations are based on hundreds of sketches he did every day in the run-up to the show. Jason will lead us in an interactive art making workshop, responding to those same objects and prompts, to explore together how creativity works and where it comes from.

Paula Boyle & Nana Zhvitiashvili

Paula Boyle is Principal Lead for Psychological and Emotional Support at Harlington Hospice and Nana Zhvitiashvili is the Child and Adolescent Bereavement Service lead at Harlington Hospice.

Understanding the importance of context and relationship in enabling people to access support, service staff have adapted therapeutic interventions to better suit the needs of their neurodiverse clients. Paula and Nana will share some inclusive practices developed here, ranging from the environment, language and co-regulation of emotions to practicing a ‘power-with’ collaborative approach, which can offer creative ideas and valuable learning for other art therapy services.

Megan Tjasink

Megan Tjasink is a Lead Art Psychotherapist at where she has developed the role of art therapy within acute medical contexts since 2005. She is currently in the final year of her PhD with QMUL.

Having seen the benefits of a creative, collaborative approach to supporting staff in an acute hospital over the pandemic, ������ϲʿ��������¼ Megan Tjasink worked with other professionals to roll out the model across four NHS secondary care hospitals in London, UK. Participants were healthcare professionals (HCPs) with moderate to severe risk of burnout or levels of perceived stress. Megan will discuss findings and insights gained from a multicentre, unblinded, randomised, parallel assignment, waitlist-controlled trial, which assessed the effectiveness of a 6-week programme of group art therapy on reducing burnout and mental distress for HCPs working in an acute hospital context. This will support ������ϲʿ��������¼s to think about staff support in their own context, but also to better understand how a clinician can develop a model of practice that best meets the needs of service users and develop this using rigorous research and evaluation.

Ania Zubala

is a researcher of art psychotherapy and evaluator of complex interventions in mental health, with a passion for expanding the evidence base for arts psychotherapies practice. She is based at the University of Edinburgh and is an Associate Editor of IJAT.

In a quickly-changing world with new developments that can affect the context, offer new ways of being creative, or change how we can engage relationally, ������ϲʿ��������¼s have to be prepared and ready to respond. How is artificial intelligence relevant to art psychotherapy? Is it meaningful, transformational, or perhaps risky? This presentation will engage in a dialogue with creative AI, as Ania uses her practice and research, including her most recent interdisciplinary project with Dr Alison Pease from the University of Dundee, to highlight some new challenges that it brings and new horizons that it opens for art psychotherapy practice.

Kim Valldejuli 

, ATR-BC, is an Art Psychotherapist, Director of the Art Therapy Association of Trinidad and Tobago, Doctoral student at Drexel University (USA), and Culturally responsive practice advisor for the International Journal of Art Therapy.

Exploring the layers of relationship with self and other can enable deep authentic connection that is informed and enriched by difference. This experiential workshop will explore the connection between ancestry, art therapy pedagogy, and practice within the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Kim will share some different theoretical approaches and ways of working that enrich and give voice to different experiences. These offer creative possibilities when looking at and thinking about art therapy practice, which can enable us to meet the differing needs of people across our communities. Participants will reflect on their individual histories through response art.

Tony Gammidge

is an artist, filmmaker and freelance ������ϲʿ��������¼ who has worked in mental health and forensic settings as well as with asylum seekers and refugees. He has been running animation projects in prisons and secure and mental health settings for the last 14 years.

The art in art therapy is often held and contained in the context of the privacy offered by the therapeutic relationship. This presentation centers on an animation film, ‘My Dark Shadow’, which was made by a participant in a workshop in a women’s prison and, with her consent, later screened for an audience at the Southbank. Tony will share her feedback about the therapeutic importance and value of receiving feedback from visitors to the Koestler exhibition. Implications for therapy are set out, including reflections on how we can creatively consider the boundaries and the stages of a therapeutic intervention – so these can take account of the particular context, contract and best meet the needs and aims agreed for therapy.

Hand2Health

is a female led therapy/tech start up, founded by 3 Integrative Art Psychotherapists, Fléur Davey, Sarah Jane Sellors, and Eleanor Strange.

Digital mental health pathways are a recognised reality in current political and social digital agendas. They can be seen to offer a helpful new way to offer support and the possibility of reaching people who might not otherwise be able to access this – due to preferred contact style, time, geographic, financial or other constraints. Hand2health are researching, developing, and initiating ways in which the creative possibilities, supportive relationship, and containment of Art Psychotherapy can be accessed through Extended Reality (XR) Therapeutics. Some of the challenges and opportunities that this technology offers for practice will be considered by Sarah Jane, Fléur and Eleanor; also, how this approach might be able to enhance or expand existing art therapy pathways and services.

About the day

Venue

The is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we all think and feel about health. It is a short walk from Euston Station, London.

Doors will open at 9.30am for a 10am start.

Lunch

We will be offering delegates fresh and delicious food options for lunch included as part of your booking. We will be asking delegates for dietary requirements.

Sponsors

are professional liability specialists, providing insurance for BAAT members at discounted rates. Their dedicated team of insurance specialists have supported therapists for over 29 years, providing tailored insurance solutions based on your circumstances and criteria, and providing hands-on help when you need it.

works across the Health, Education and Social Care sectors and is the UK’s largest and leading provider of HCPC regulated Creative Arts Therapies services. Chroma won the prestigious “Supporting the Industry” category at the 2022 PI Awards, and is rated “Outstanding” by Ofsted. Chroma is commissioned by NHS and private hospitals, brain injury case managers, local authorities, schools and residential nursing and care homes. Its team of 100+ art, drama and music therapists work nationally and collaboratively within MDTs and are fully supported behind the scenes by Chroma’s experienced management team.

Inspiring Creativity Since 1783. First founded as a pigment company for wigs in the UK, has grown into an internationally-renowned fine arts manufacturing company with colours & pigments still at its core. From paint, brushes and surfaces to accessories, luggage and easels, Daler-Rowney produces & sells products for artist of all experience levels.

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