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.

Tickets sold out!

As this is an in-person event, this year’s conference had a limited number of tickets available, which are now sold out.

In case of cancellations, we have opened a waiting list for those that missed out on purchasing a ticket. Please register your interest by joining the waiting list.

Please refer to our event terms and conditions or email us at events@baat.org for more information.

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.

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.

Conference phishing email alert

We have recently been made aware that some members have received phishing emails from a third party claiming to be in possession of a BAAT conference email distribution list, which they are selling and another third part claiming they were selling tickets for our Annual Conference, who promised a schedule and speakers listing after payment. Please note that they are not acting on our behalf and we are not engaged with any third parties. Tickets for our Annual Conference can ONLY be purchased directly from the BAAT website.

BAAT has not and will not resell member data and we ask that you do not engage with any organisation claiming to sell such data. If you are contacted by such a third party, we recommend that you block the sender/domain. You can also help us block these entities by reporting them as phishing/spam in Outlook, and by reporting them to the Government via report@phishing.gov.uk.

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 & 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, Harlington Hospice’s Child & Adolescent Bereavement 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 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.

Having seen the benefits of a creative, collaborative approach to supporting staff in an acute hospital over the pandemic, art therapist 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 art therapists 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.

Dr 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.

Recent dramatic advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) increase its relevance in psychotherapy contexts and promise novel opportunities, including for computationally creative systems to play a significant role in the therapy process and relationship. How is AI 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 

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

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.

The art in art therapy is often held and contained in the context of the privacy offered by the therapeutic relationship. This presentation centres on a couple of animation films made by participants in a women’s prison including ‘My Dark Shadow’, which was, with her consent, later screened at the Koestler Arts exhibition at the Southbank. Tony will share feedback from visitors to the exhibition and reflect on the therapeutic importance and value of receiving such positive validation from the general public particularly in the context of the public shame which the film alludes to. Often participants make films for their children and family as a way of telling their story and as a way of connecting to those they are separated from. Implications for therapy are set out, including reflections on how we can creatively consider the boundaries and the stages of a therapeutic intervention and how considering a potential audience with the participant can add another layer of meaning and benefit to the process.

Hand2Health

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.

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.