Presentations will enable us to reflect on how art therapists 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 art therapists 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 No Barriers Here project, an award-winning, internationally acclaimed model of advance care planning.

Jason Wilsher-Mills

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, ‘Jason and the Adventure of 254,’ 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

Paula Boyle is Principal Lead for Psychological and Emotional Support at Harlington Hospice. She is an Art Psychotherapist, supervisor and systemically trained in leadership with the Institute of Family Therapy. Paula is involved with the ‘Neurodiversity and Grief’ research and has presented regionally and nationally at conferences, such as, Hospice UK, advocating for art therapy in palliative and hospice care. She is a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths University, Art Psychotherapy MA. She enjoys her creative art practice in glass making.

Nana Zhvitiashvili

Nana Zhvitiashvili is the Child and Adolescent Bereavement Service lead at Harlington Hospice. As an Art Psychotherapist, Family Therapy Practitioner and Supervisor, Nana is involved in delivering pre-and post-bereavement services. She is a committee member of Creative Response, BAAT special interest group and has edited and written books and articles on topics such as: art therapy in museums, and art therapy in palliative care. She is interested in art therapy in legacy making in the context of end-of-life care.

Megan Tjasink

Megan Tjasink is a Lead Art Psychotherapist at Barts Health NHS Trust 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. Her doctoral research into the use of art therapy to reduce burnout in healthcare professionals (HCPs) is funded by a Barts Charity Clinical Research Fellowship. Megan lectures on several MA Art Therapy programmes in the UK and abroad. She is a clinical supervisor and provides professional development for HCPs across several NHS Trusts and in international contexts. Megan spent her formative years in Cape Town, South Africa. She enjoys being in mountains or by the sea and is an avid girls’ football supporter.

Ania Zubala

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. Ania’s most recent interdisciplinary project with Dr Alison Pease from the University of Dundee explores divergencies and synergies of computational creativity and art psychotherapy, with strong emphasis on ethics and implications for the therapeutic process and relationship.

Kim Valldejuli 

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. Kim has worked in various settings, including residential and educational placements, humanitarian support, domestic violence programming, and acute mental health. Kim is currently an expressive therapist at Mary Washington Healthcare (USA). Recent publication: Shifting the Narrative: An Intersectional Exploration of Art Therapy in the Caribbean.

Tony Gammidge

Tony Gammidge is an artist, filmmaker and freelance art therapist 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. He has been developing a theoretical and experiential link between the use of animation with trauma and runs CPD workshops for arts therapists and trainees on animation and narrative in clinical settings.

Hand2Health

Hand2Health is a female led therapy/tech start up, founded by 3 Integrative Art Psychotherapists, Fléur Davey, Sarah Jane Sellors, and Eleanor Strange. They have known each other for 7 years, through training and clinical practice, and their vision for an inclusive conscious business aims to offer therapeutic mental health support to individuals, systems, and organisations. Their interest lies in clinical technological approaches, offering innovative therapeutics creatively.

About the day

Venue

The Wellcome Collection 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.

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

Howden 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.

Chroma 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, Daler-Rowney 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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