Update from our Chair, Claire Louise

Claire Vaculik

As the days grow warmer and we look towards the summer, I notice feeling a growing energy and sense of the possibilities that lie ahead.

The next few months will be very busy for all of us, with on-going financial pressures, changes and challenges in workplace, and additional bank holidays due to the Coronation. Hopefully the extra day off this month will enable you to spend time with loved ones, perhaps to rest and to make art, or to come together with others in your community.

A time of change

Work at BAAT continues to grow and develop, which is a real pleasure to see. The past few years have been quite hard – trying to manage the impact of the pandemic on the organisation and our members, and starting to undertake some of the many changes that were needed in the organisation.

Together with our CEO, Gary, we have had to build a secure footing for the organisation so that we can be ready to respond to the different challenges that art therapists face across the UK. This has included developing more structured, longer-term planning and systems that allow us to communicate more effectively with members. Both of which enable us to work in a more co-ordinated way to support you.

Innovations like the new website also enable us to communicate more effectively with the public and commissioners, so we can start to raise the profile of our unique profession and share the many benefits of art psychotherapy with others.  Members have told me at my monthly Chair’s drop-ins of some issues that still need to be addressed, but most have said how pleased they are with the work we have done so far. I do hope that others feel this too.

What’s next?

There is more to do internally and externally. There has been work on developing the Articles of Association, so that these are fit for purpose and up-to-date with current practice. You will have seen an invitation to attend workshops about this – please do come along! We really want everyone to be well informed about the options and the implications for the organisation and our shared work.

Looking ahead, we want to develop our work in communications further through the website and media. Council will now be working with our CEO to develop a structured approach to communication and public affairs, as this is vital to ensure that as many people as possible across all of the UK understand what art psychotherapy has to offer. We will also start to reach out to re-establish old relationships and build new relationships that can allow us to influence policy and commissioning, as this is being developed.

Share your successes

Our aim is to ensure that all people who want to access art therapy as their preferred form of support will have this option available to them, wherever they live.

Each of you is so important in this next stage. We are Inviting you to send in details of any interviews, articles and podcasts that you make, so that we can share and celebrate your successes. We will also start to develop resources that will support art therapists to feel confident to speak up publicly about their amazing work and about what art therapy has to offer.

I encountered a brilliant example of this last month, when I attended a Good Grief Festival event with Michael Rosen on grief education at school. In this he reflected that there is no requirement for schools to cover grief or bereavement, despite 1 in 29 school children In the UK being bereaved of a parent or sibling by the time they leave school – an equivalent of one child in every class. The panel explored how grief education could help to normalise grief, prepare pupils to manage bereavement and support others, and foster the development of a more compassionate society.

While this education may not yet have to be offered by the school itself, I know that so many of you in schools do this work brilliantly – by supporting children to share and to understand what they are experiencing, by speaking with staff and parents, and by running INSET sessions on grief and many other issues that impact the children your service supports. You can imagine how delighted I was to learn that Dr Lesel Dawson is leading a research project on Creative Grieving and writing a book that explores how art and the imagination can enable the bereaved to express and process their loss, which includes contributions by art therapists. She is also making two collaborative animated films on children’s bereavement and creativity, developed with Julia Samuel MBE, Gary Andrews and art therapist, Victoria Tolchard. I can’t wait to see these animations!

We really need to share or develop examples of this sort of work more widely, across the many practice areas where art therapists work.

Being a more inclusive profession

Being a more inclusive profession is something that Council is passionate about. We hope that you are using the free resource on inclusive language on the website. Also, that you might consider booking in for one of the new ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Art Therapy’ events that we are running. It is so important that we all engage with these issues and update the way we work to take account of this learning.

We are also working on shared projects, like the ‘EDI Toolkit’. This was commissioned by the Coalition for Inclusion and Anti-Oppressive Practice (of which BAAT is a member, alongside BACP, UKCP and several other psychotherapy and counselling organisations). There was a great deal of interest in this and the event we arranged in February was very well-attended, with over 90 people taking part. Thanks again to Marcelline Menyié and Danielle Osajivbe-Williams for making time to share their work with us. If you missed the event, you can watch a recording of it in the list of free CPD for members.

Unfortunately, in the interim, there have been some unexpected delays in the publication process. We will let you know as soon as the toolkit is released and we will share it with all of our members by email.

The new apprenticeship route

It is very exciting to see the new apprenticeship route to training as an art therapist is up and running at Teesside University, as this should widen access to the profession. The programme is recruiting currently and will start in September 2023.

The apprenticeship pathway is the result of an enormous amount of work over several years, initially undertaken by BAAT, BAMT and BADTh. Over the past few months, we have been pleased to continue this important work by supporting the programme team to consider and resolve some of the issues and dilemmas that have arisen in bringing this dream to life.

Supporting you through training and changes to the profession

Thinking about changes in the way those already on the register practice is really important too, as the new HCPC ‘Standards of Proficiency for Art Therapists’ come into effect this September.

We are looking to co-run workshops with HCPC about this, to ensure that we are all ready for these changes. Alongside this, our CEO and I liaise regularly with the HCPC about our work more broadly. We want to ensure that all art therapists have a positive experience through training, that they are well-prepared for the workplace, and that they enjoy long and fulfilling careers once on the register.

One new resource that BAAT is developing to this end is a Forum SIG specially for art therapy trainees. We hope that this will support them on their training journey and offer a place to share experiences with peers from different trainings.

Building international relationships

And finally, I wanted to share that last weekend I joined our CEO to record a presentation for the ‘Art Therapy International Education Conference’, hosted by the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

We were delighted to be invited to speak by Lucy Li and Coco Li, who I met at the 2019 International Practice and Research Conference (arranged jointly by BAAT and American Art Therapy Association). We know that Lucy and Coco have done so much to develop understanding of the healing power of the arts in China and were pleased to support this. We shared some ideas with attendees about the functions of a professional body and how these might support people working in countries where art therapy is developing to come together in a structured way so they can grow this important work.

I am so pleased to be part of this rich, creative art therapy community.

 

I am so pleased to be part of this rich, creative art therapy community and thankful for the twenty or so years that I have been able to enjoy working in this ever-changing profession. I hope that the work that we are doing at BAAT will start to help you to be able to access more of the resources you need, to meet up with like-minded art therapist to talk about and share your practice, and to step out into a world in which art therapy is more widely understood and valued.

I look forward to seeing many of you at our upcoming AGM, which is on Saturday, 24 June 2023!