AMERICAN ART THERAPY ASSOCIATION MISSION STATEMENT
The American Art Therapy Association, Inc. is an organization of professionals dedicated to the belief that the creative process involved in the making of art is healing and life-enhancing. Its mission is to serve its members and the general public by providing standards of professional competence and developing and promoting knowledge in and about the field of art therapy.
MULTICULTURAL STATEMENT OF PURPOSE:
The Multicultural Committee embraces an inclusive definition of culture. The committee provides information, networking, and mentoring for all art therapists to develop multicultural competence and increase diversity within the American Art Therapy Association.
A brand new online distance learning course called
Fostering Multicultural and Diversity Competence in Art Therapy is now available through the American Art Therapy Association’s Institute for Continuing Education in Art Therapy (ICE/AT).
Fostering Multicultural and Diversity Competence in Art Therapy course, developed by the Multicultural Committee, has just been added to the American Art Therapy Association’s Institute for Continuing Education in Art Therapy (ICE/AT). Multicultural and Diversity Competence in art therapy is a capacity whereby art therapists possess cultural and diversity awareness and knowledge about self and others, and at the same time ensure that this awareness and knowledge is skillfully applied in practice with clients and client groups. Fostering Multicultural and Diversity Competence in Art Therapy is designed to strengthen the identity of art therapists by advancing multicultural and diversity competence as essential to ethical practice and the cornerstone for effective art therapy practice.
The Course learning materials include: the Multicultural Committee Historical Overview, 2011 Art Therapy Multicultural-Diversity Competencies,
Wheel of Diversity in Art Therapy: Pioneers of Color, a documentary film, and more!
Click here to login to ICE/AT.
Please click here to read the
2011 Multicultural Competencies
Please click here to read the
Multicultural Bibliography
2013 PEARLIE ROBERSON SCHOLARSHIP AWARD
Pearlie Roberson was an African American artist and art therapy client. Through her art therapy work, she painted and sculpted powerful metaphors that explained how she felt about herself during certain periods of her life, her spiritual belief in Christianity, her kinship connection to her African heritage, and her feelings about the progression of her illness. As acknowledged by her art therapist, “Art-making profoundly affected Pearlie’s final months and days; it provided an avenue to her own strength that helped through dark hours of long nights. It gave her perspective and peace.”
The Pearlie Roberson Scholarship Award is specifically designed to provide financial support for a project, undertaken by a Student or Professional member of the American Art Therapy Association, which targets multicultural aspects and capacities of art therapy. The award is based on the merit of the project proposal, not financial need.
April 1, 2013 is the deadline for applying for this award. Please visit the Members-Only section of this website for detailed application directions and instructions.
Recipients of the award are encouraged to present the winning project at the American Art Therapy Association Annual Conference. In addition, Pearlie Roberson Scholarship Award Projects will be under consideration for placement in the Robert E. Ault Archives.
The Multicultural Committee extends an invitation to Students and Professional members to apply for the Pearlie Roberson Scholarship Award. The award honors Ms. Roberson’s request to “remember me” and supports efforts to “explore, express, connect…to enhance the multicultural aspects of the therapeutic experience.
