Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT This webinar report documents The Arts in Health and the Creative Arts Therapies: Convergences and Intersections , convened on January 10, 2026, as part of the International Association for Creative Arts in Education and Therapy (IACAET) Global Dialogue Series. Curated by Vivien Marcow Speiser and Tony Yu Zhou, the dialogue brought together international leaders to examine the evolving relationship between Arts in Health and the Creative Arts Therapies at a pivotal historical moment. The conversation explored how these historically distinct yet epistemologically aligned fields share foundational commitments to aesthetic experience, embodied imagination, and relational presence as central to health and resilience. While the Creative Arts Therapies maintain clinically grounded psychotherapeutic frameworks, Arts in Health extends across community, educational, and public health contexts. Rather than framing these domains as competing or hierarchical, participants described them as braided traditions - clinical, communal, ritual, and artistic - each accountable to cultural context, ethical responsibility, and lived histories. Resisting simplistic integration, the dialogue embraced productive tensions: clinical depth alongside community practice, credentialed therapy alongside cultural ritual, and policy frameworks alongside lived memory. Together, both fields affirm that creativity is not peripheral to health, but foundational to it.
Authors: Vivien Marcow Speiser, Tony Yu Zhou
Institution: Lesley University
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7204229538