WELCOME FROM THE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAN ART THERAPY ASSOCIATION

On behalf of the American Art Therapy Association’s Board of Directors and National Office Team, welcome to AATA’s 50th Annual Conference: Celebrating 50 Years of Healing Through Art! We could not have reached this milestone without our members, and we are honored and humbled to join with you here in Kansas City at the culmination of our year-long celebration!

So much has happened since we saw you last in Miami. We achieved stand-alone licensure for art therapists in Connecticut—with ongoing art therapy legislative activity in more than 20 states! The first ten art therapy graduate programs have been approved for external accreditation (and counting!). We are connecting with each other more than ever, thanks to our member Online Forum, MyAATA, and soon we’ll be enjoying a super-charged online education experience! We have strengthened collaborations, old and new, with our friends in the mental health and arts spaces. We worked with the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT) to offer the inaugural international research conference in London, furthering the reach of art therapy across the globe. To advocate for strong federal behavioral health policies and in support of the arts, we partnered with Americans for the Arts on Arts Advocacy Day again and, for the first time, with the National Council for Behavioral Health for their Hill Day. We are additionally working with the Healthy Parks Healthy People Initiative of the National Parks Service to bring art therapy into the parks.

This year, we have also been working hard to enhance/reinforce/fortify the Association’s Governance. Last year, the Board established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) Initiative and made DE&I a core priority within the strategic plan. We are proud to welcome the IVY Planning Group to lead DE&I learning opportunities for all conference attendees as well as train the Board and chapter leaders. We encourage you to join the informal roundtable discussion during their Pop-Up learning session on Thursday at 12:00 p.m., and participate in the Focus Group, What Makes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Hard? on Thursday at 1:30 p.m.

Finally, thank you to all our conference sponsors and exhibitors, especially to our Bronze Sponsors: Art Therapy Credentials Board (ATCB), Blick Art Materials, Faber-Castell, Herron School of Art + Design, and HPSO.

We look forward to meeting each of you and encourage you to say “hello” between sessions or at the opening or closing celebrations.  We’re so glad you’ve chosen to join us for our 50th anniversary conference, and we can’t wait to see what we’ll achieve together in the next fifty years!