Dr Carla van Laar. “Standing Strong in our Professional Identity” – Art based and collaborative approaches in individual planning and responding as humanising alternatives to assessments and interventions.

In our recent article, The Balancing Act: Performing Stories of our Practice within Systems of the State, Dr Alisoun Neville and I wrote:

Last year, an emerging Arts Therapist in an online group posted a message asking for advice. They had just attended a job interview and had been asked if they had experience conducting assessments. They described how they had felt ill-equipped to respond and grasped around for answers.

Someone else posted recently about doing a “tree house assessment” and asked for others’ opinions about this test. Responses came thick and fast – “validity is low”, “it’s diagnostic” and “not person centred”, “it’s interpretive”, “it’s 80 years old”…

The take-home message seemed to be that, as Arts Therapists, we can do better. However, when the question was posed, “What do you use for assessments?” the conversation ceased.

What are these examples indicative of?

My guess is that, as Arts Therapists, we have LOW CONFIDENCE in identifying and articulating our own approaches and standing up for them in multi-disciplinary settings.

As I wrote to the first poster, perhaps the feelings of anxiety that Arts Therapists can experience when asked “Do you have experience in conducting assessments?” are not necessarily to do with our lack of competence in this area, but MORE to do with the discomfort we feel when we are asked to adopt the objective and dehumanising discourses of a scientific paradigm.

When taken to the extreme, objectifying people leads to atrocities like trafficking, rape and genocide. From this perspective, feeling resistance towards dehumanising language and practices is a STRENGTH and not a deficit.

I believe that the profession of Arts Therapy is at a crucial point of maturation in Australia, and that we are currently the care takers of shaping this profession.

It is time to nurture our confidence in our own ways of working, to claim our collective practices and professional voice, and to stand strong in describing how our values inform our practice and how our practice informs the language we use and the stories we tell about our work.

Let’s own it!

As a Presenter for the Creative Mental Health Forum and Self Care Retreat I am sharing a keynote in which I address these issues, followed by an experiential workshop where I will demonstrate, and you are invited to participate, in arts based and collaborative approaches to individual planning and responding as humanising alternatives to assessments and interventions.

The content of this workshop has been tried and tested in real life situations including my work as a clinician in the Adolescent Forensic Health Service at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, as well as headspace Northern and Western Melbourne, and as the Principal Therapist at VincentCare Victoria’s Young Adult’s Counselling Service. These approaches are in keeping with the Australian Government’s Professional Practice Standards for Mental Health Practitioners.

By doing this together, we ultimately strengthen our field and our collective voice in the landscape of multi-disciplinary practice.

Dr Carla van Laar MCAT, Prof Doc TAP, AThR

Registered Supervisor ANZACATA

Carla van Laar is delighted to be your host and MC for the Creative Mental Health Forum and Self Care Retreat.

Carla is a painter, author, educator and arts therapist who has 30 years’ experience working with people and the arts for health and well-being in community organisations, justice, health and education contexts. She is the author of two books that break taboos and make subjugated stories visible through art, Bereaved Mother’s Heart and Seeing Her Stories.

Carla is first generation Australian on her Dutch grandparents’ side, and 7th generation through her maternal English settler bloodline. Carla currently lives and works in Victoria, between Wurrundjeri country in Melbourne, and Boon Wurrung country, Inverloch.

Identifying as a cisgender woman, Carla is passionately disinterested in socially constructed identities that disempower or subjugate. Carla is driven by a commitment to the values and epistemologies of arts-based, collaborative practice.

We pay our deep respects to the First Peoples of Boon Wurrung Country where we will meet.

Friday 14th – Monday 17th May 2021

Inverloch RACV Resort, Bass Coast, Victoria

Your host, Dr Carla van Laar is a Professional Member and Accredited Supervisor with ANZACATA.

This training event is proudly endorsed by PACFA for 11 hours of continuing professional development.

We welcome Professor Anne (Dan) Harris, Director of Creative Agency Research Lab, ARC Future Fellow, Associate Dean, Research & Innovation, School of Education, RMIT University.

Profits from this forum/retreat will be donated to support CATA’s work employing qualified Arts Therapists to work with families of children receiving end of life care. 

$600 registration fee covers core program, Friday night Welcome Dinner, morning and afternoon teas, and is payable in 3 instalments.

Registration does not include accomodation or meals other than the Welcome Dinner.

The core program includes Welcome Dinner, morning mindful activities, 6 x keynote presentations, 6 x 1.5 hour experiential workshops and a number of optional wellness activities for self-care including dance, art making, swimming and walking. Surfing, Stand Up Paddle Boarding and Snorkelling are available as optional add ons at affordable prices. 

 This forum supports the goals of the ACTivate Arts Therapy campaign – to have Arts Therapists recognised as mental health professionals.For this purpose, the forum is designed to be educational in an experiential sense – by providing opportunities to participate first hand in creative and holistic workshops and activities, as well as hear from dynamic keynote presenters and a panel of lived experience experts.

The 2021 Creative Mental Health Forum and Self-care Retreat is an opportunity to look after yourself and learn while enjoying good company and restorative time in the living world.

It is hosted only two hours drive from Melbourne in the beautiful surrounds of the Bass Coast Bunurong Marine Park and township of coastal Inverloch.

This Professional Development event is suitable for Therapists  interested in understanding more about creative approaches in mental health care.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CREATIVE MENTAL HEALTH FORUM AND SELF CARE RETREAT