Chair’s Introduction

I have the pleasure of introducing and chairing the first of three panels looking at the changing shape of art therapy.These three panels, beginning each conference day over the next three days, will look at how art therapy becomes shaped by different contexts, by different identities and by different theoretical underpinnings.So the focus of today’s panel is the way context shapes practice and here we are thinking of context being the country, socio-economic and cultural factors, the physical setting, the organizational setting and so forth.Our panelists Marcela, Blanca and Dominik have been chosen because they represent the diversity of contexts in which art therapists’ work