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ITA’s 6th Annual Integrated
Creative Arts Therapy Conference

Registration is now open!

Our annual conference affords professionals and students an opportunity to connect and learn about clinical work, research, training, and representation within art, dance/movement, drama and music therapies. Our 6th annual conference in 2022 will be held virtually on May 12-14, 2022.

Click here for our conference brochure- PDF.

Click here for the conference brochure- plain text.

Early bird registration is now open, extended for Creative Arts Therapy week!
Take advantage of the discounted rate now through March 31st.
Those who register before early bird ends are automatically entered to a raffle for a free creative arts gift basket, which has a value of over $50!

REGISTER HERE

Explore how the creative arts therapies remain crucial as we navigate the next stages of the pandemic and how we can position our fields at the forefront of healthcare.

With the theme ‘Essential to Health & Influencing a Changing World,’ we will explore the Creative Arts Therapies in the 2020s. Each stage of the COVID-19 pandemic brings new challenges for people around the world. The uncertainty, rapid transitions, isolation, and fear contribute to a collective trauma and a call for creative arts therapists to respond. How do the creative arts therapies effectively address these emerging difficulties? How can we draw attention to the essential roles of creative arts therapists within the healthcare system? 

Keynote presentation: “Destruction and Transformation: Finding Reenchantment for the Creative Arts Therapist’s Role in Community”

The arts are essential to opening up new possibilities for human beings to survive and thrive. By reconnecting with the communal and liminal origins of creative arts therapies, we invite you to decolonize the role of the creative arts therapist and find renewed enchantment with the life affirming work that we do.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Tomoyo Kawano (she/her/hers), PhD, BC-DMT, NCC is an Associate Professor and Director of the Master’s in Dance/Movement Therapy Program at Antioch University New England. She is a faculty advisor for the Justice Leadership Council and serves on the Anti-Racism task force alongside colleagues across the five campuses of Antioch University. Growing up multiculturally in Japan, Peru, Venezuela, Italy, and the US, she learned early on to attend to nonverbal communication and found belonging in dance. As a dance/movement therapist, Tomoyo worked primarily with adults and adolescents with acute and chronic mental illness in inpatient and outpatient settings. Her research interest, reflected in her presentations and publications, is in dance epistemology and its explication with research methodology, ritual and ceremony, and critical pedagogy. She co-authored “Applying Critical Consciousness to DMT Pedagogy and the Politics of the Body” (2019) with Meg Chang. She is on the American Dance Therapy Association’s board of Directors, serves as the Education Committee Chair, is former co-leader of the Asian/Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Affinity Group, is a member of the Multicultural and Diversity Committee; and serves on the editorial board of the Arts in Psychotherapy journal.

Panel: “CATs at the Frontlines”

A panel of creative arts therapists with frontline roles will share their experiences working in high-risk settings during the pandemic. Learn how their essential services have evolved amid the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. 2 CEUs Available. Featuring:
Rakhi Shingala, LCPC, BC-DMT.
Rakhi has over 15 years of experience working as a mental health professional and over 10 years of experience working as Dance/movement therapist. Rakhi has worked with kids, adolescents, adults and older adults. Her expertise includes working with clients who have anxiety, depression, history of trauma and abuse. Rakhi has also worked with clients who have eating disorders, ADHA, OCD and other behavior difficulties. Rakhi uses a client-centered approach and collaborates with clients to develop treatment plans in a safe, open and trusted environment. Building creative intervention within traditional cognitive-behavior techniques, Rakhi encourages emotional expression and mind-body connection to facility change and healing.
Kendra Ray, PhD, MPH, LCAT, MT-BC
Dr. Kendra Ray is Research Assistant Professor at NYU Langone and Dementia Program Director at Menorah Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing Care.  Dr. Ray is a New York State licensed creative arts therapist, nationally board-certified music therapist, clinician and researcher with more than a decade of experience working with people with dementia and their caregivers.  She has published several widely recognized, peer-reviewed articles that focused on the use of non-pharmacological interventions for the aging population, especially people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.  Currently, she is the Principal Investigator on an Alzheimer’s Association funded study that focuses on the use of evidence-based music interventions for people with dementia and their family caregivers.

Willow Messier, MAAT, ATR-BC, ATCS, CCLS

Willow Messier, MAAT, ATR-BC, ATCS, CCLS, is a Registered, Board-Certified, Art Therapist, Art Therapy Certified Supervisor, and Certified Child Life Specialist. Since 2007 she has been with Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital (Previously Children’s Memorial Hospital) providing medical art therapy services to hematology/oncology patients at the bedside, outpatient clinics and to patients followed by the palliative care team. Willow has presented locally and nationally on a variety of topics including end-of-life work, grief and bereavement, assessments, medical artmaking, uncomfortable situations, and art therapy supervision. Willow developed and facilitates the medical art therapy internship program at Lurie Children’s Hospital and supervises medical art therapy interns from The Adler School of Professional Psychology and The School of the Art Institute. Willow received her master’s degree in art therapy from New York University in 2004 and her Bachelor of Arts Degree in from Hampshire College, in Massachusetts in 1997. She previously developed and grew the art therapy program at Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai in New York City on the upper East Side and provided art therapy, child life, as well as developing and hosting closed circuit TV programming for pediatric patients and their families. In addition to being an art therapist, Willow loves to make large paintings on canvas in her home studio as well as making creative projects in the kitchen.

Keith Whipple, MA, RDT

Keith Whipple is dedicated to improving lives through the creative arts. Keith is a Registered Drama Therapist (RDT) with the North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA), and received his BFA from DePaul University’s Theatre School, and his MA from Lesley University. As an Improv instructor and coach for ComedySportz Education, Keith has over 25 years of experience helping individuals and organizations achieve greater success and fulfillment. Whether it is through individual or group creative arts therapy at Alexian Brothers Behavioral Health and ASCENSION health care sites, or through improv via the ComedySportz High School League of the CSz Theater, Keith is committed to helping others achieve positive, measurable growth and change.

 

 

 

Snapshots from past ITA Conferences:

 

Peter Himmelman, Brad Drozdowski, and fellow attendee singing during Peter Himmelman's presentation.   4 conference attendees sitting and supporting the arms of a 5th conference attendee.

 

 

 

 

 

Attendees during a dance movement therapy session connecting their fists and thumbs together to form a circle.     Attendees during a drama therapy session forming a still scene.

 

 

 

 

Sponsored by:

      

  

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ITA is grateful for our sponsors! Browse our 2022 Sponsorship Brochure to learn how you can support our next conference. If you are interested in sponsoring our 2022 conference, please contact Akash Bhatia at abhatia@itachicago.org or fill out this form.