London Art Therapy Centre is a group practice with an extended professional community of art therapy colleagues, trainers, authors, researchers and supervisors.
The second Wednesday of every month we meet for a two-hour exploratory clinical meeting or guest presentation to make art and discuss various themes that occur in our work. Previous clinical meetings have looked at Poetry and Therapy; Politics and Therapy; Sex therapy; Death and Dying; Equine-assisted therapy; Developing approaches for working on Zoom; the impact of the pandemic and so on.
We have had quite a few requests to join this meeting and have decided to offer 6 guest places each time we run an open meeting. There will be five or six open meetings each year. Places are for qualified art therapists only – whom we hope will contribute and enrich our discussions with additional experience from whatever perspective you come from. Places are booked on a first-come-first-served basis and the Eventbrite booking process will let you know when all 6 places are full.
Timing: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Sessions begin promptly at 7pm and the Zoom room is open from 6.50pm to allow for informal connections and introductions. If you have not previously attended we ask you to log on at 6.50pm so you can meet the other practitioners and introduce yourself.
CPD Accreditation
These meetings qualify for 2 hours of Continuing Professional Development (CPD). You are also welcome to write them up for our blog if you are interested.
2023 dates for open meetings
Wed 13 September [This clinical meeting is now fully subscribed!]
Shame and Trauma tend to arrive hand-in-hand as inward emotional attacks leading to avoidance, isolation and withdrawal from both the healthy parts of one’s self and the world at large. And while much has recently been written about trauma, shame has seemed to remain in the shadows.
This clinical meeting will address working with shame in art therapy. Described as a “moral emotion” shame can influence a person’s thoughts, decisions and behaviours especially in social situations. The focus of shame is inward, toward viewing the self as a “bad object”. Working with clients who carry deep layers of shame can be challenging. Even when the therapist’s gaze holds non judgment with compassion, the simple act of being looked at can trigger in such clients feelings of inferiority, uselessness and self-loathing.
In this meeting we will look at shame as a basic and useful emotion, the biological and neurological effects of shame, how shame relates to trauma and how it can be co- occurring with other conditions such as depression, anxiety, and some physiological difficulties. We will highlight how art therapy can be useful in helping clients work with and through their shame, acknowledge their relationship to its influence toward gaining agency over shame as an impermanent feeling not a fact.
We warmly welcome our colleague, art therapist Colleen Steiner Westling to facilitate this meeting.
Open Clinical Meeting Booking:
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- If you book a place and subsequently need to cancel, there is no option for refunds or transferring to another date.
- We like to know who is coming so please ensure your full name is clear on the booking form and you will be sent the Zoom link for the waiting room.
- Please have some art materials ready as we almost always make art as part of our learning process.
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Fee
£8 per session (+ £1.38 Eventbrite processing) TOTAL = £9.38
15 November – Working with Phone Photography presented by Mark Wheeler SRATh FRCS
Phone photography may be the most widely practised Outsider Art in the 21st Century. Photographs can be powerful catalysts for emotion & conversation with voice, clay, paint & other materials.
Arts therapists can engage with photos as intimately as other media; photos often short-circuit our visual filters. The reality trap & reality gap of photographs can support art therapeutic encounters.