New Publication “The Balancing Act” – Co-authored by Dr Alisoun Neville and Dr Carla van Laar

Feature Image: “Looking up”, Carla van Laar.

Congratulations to the Editors, designer and contributors of the first edition of our new Australian publication, the “Journal of Creative Arts Therapies” – JoCAT.

Alisoun Neville and I have coauthored an article for the historic first edition, and here it is!

Alisoun and I have known each other for a long time, well before either of us were Arts Therapists. We are friends as well as colleagues, and have enjoyed time together on numerous occasions making art and chatting.

It is largely through this informal time together that we have come to realise that we share many common values that flow into our Arts Therapy practices.

We share concerns about human rights and dignity, the value of centralising people as experts in our/their own lives, and about how arts based practice can inform how we work, and also how we talk about, describe and represent our wok, our shared profession.

Although I am writing today without Alisoun, I honour and respect her deeply, as a practitioner and as a person. My sense is that we both care profoundly about the identity of Arts Therapy as a profession. It is this shared caring that led us to collaborate and give voice to things that are important to us in this new article.

The feedback we have received from other Arts Therapists indicates that others share this intense caring for our professional identity and the questions that we raise along with some suggestions.

I am proud to be working alongside Alisoun and many other Arts Therapists at this pivotal moment in our collective professional journey, as we craft and shape what Arts Therapy can be.

This article shares some of our values informed and practice led perspectives.

Abstract:

“Funding for arts therapy services through the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has changed the way that Australian arts therapists can work.

While facilitating increased access to arts therapy, the NDIS raises challenges for arts therapists who experience pressure to conform to deficit-focused reporting practices.

We invite arts therapists to reflect on the values performed by the documents we produce, and to resist the influence of institutional and systemic practices that can disempower and stigmatise.

We offer the possibility of humanising, collaborative and empowering approaches that are more in keeping with the values underpinning arts therapy practice.”

Read our article FREE here.

And the whole journal is FREE to read here.

Enjoy! And, please, do leave us feedback with your comments.

Carla.