This year our annual conference will be a hybrid event. This page is for online tickets. In-person tickets are available this webpage.

Together we will consider how art therapists can collaborate with different professions and practitioners and explore recent developments in collaborative practices that continue to shape the field.

At the heart of this conference will be a recognition of the importance of co-production and understanding and championing service user voices. This exciting and evolving approach has deepened the art therapy experience for everyone involved and sits at the core of art therapy values.

Through a rich programme of presentations, the day will offer space to reflect on how art therapists can work collaboratively – considering environment, setting, and shared or overlapping spaces – and offer inspiration for new ways of working together.

About the day

Online ticket holders will join a live stream via Zoom. The in-person event will be held at the Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we all think and feel about health.

Programme

Online tickets will include main speaker presentations and plenary sessions from the main auditorium but will not include afternoon parallel experiential art-making sessions.

Keynote speaker, Claudy Jongstra: Reconnecting through wool – collaboration, craft, and the senses

Internationally renowned artist Claudy Jongstra will share her vision and practice, exploring the power of collaboration and the profound value of natural materials—particularly wool. Working collaboratively with schools, institutions, and organisations, Jongstra invites others to experience the power of wool, its soft texture offering a sensory-rich experience to stimulate all our senses and hand-head coordination.

In an increasingly digital and fast-paced world, her work offers a return to slowness, to making, and to feeling. Through the artisanal practice of making a felted piece of wool, Jongstra demonstrates how slow design can soothe, heal, and restore our sense of presence.

Claudy Jongstra is renowned globally for her monumental woollen art installations and her artworks are part of many collections. She maintains a herd of indigenous sheep and runs a biodynamic farm to grow dye plants – effectively combining her artist’s practice with ecological stewardship. Jongstra is dedicated to transferring knowledge and skills to younger generations and to strengthen society by focusing on collaboration.

Collaboration: Drivers, directions and dimensions

Helen Jury and Ali Coles

What does collaboration mean for art therapists? Drawing on examples of innovative practice from around the world alongside their own professional experience, Ali and Helen will explore the drivers, directions and dimensions of collaboration in contemporary art therapy. Spanning collaboration with people, places and processes, they will discuss key issues in relation to art therapy theory, values and ethics, drawing on the views of both therapees and therapists.

Ali Coles is an Art Psychotherapist working within NHS secondary adult mental health services in Gloucestershire. She teaches on the MA Art Psychotherapy course at the University of South Wales and has been an Associate Editor of The International Journal of Art Therapy. She was awarded a PhD by Publication in 2024.

Helen Jury is an Art Psychotherapist, and supervisor. She is Visiting Lecturer on MA Art Psychotherapy clinical trainings, an external examiner, and teaches on the MASC in Creative Health at UCL. Between 2010 and 2024, she was also an Associate Editor of IJAT. In 2010, she set up the MA in Art Psychotherapy at University of South Wales, leaving in 2016 to pursue doctoral research.

The full programme will be available closer to the time.

Tickets

Tickets for our Annual Conference can ONLY be purchased directly from the BAAT website.

Employer-funded bookings can be made for in-person or online participation by completing an invoice request form and returning it to events@baat.org. The deadline for online ticket employer-funded bookings is Monday, 6th October.

Prefer to join us in-person? Find out more about our in-person tickets:

In-person tickets

Sponsors

Art therapist awards sponsor Daler-Rowney.

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.