Join us virtually for the 13th annual Arts and Healthcare Conference, "The Arts and Covid: Addressing Anxiety and Resiliency," presented by the Institute for Arts and Health at Lesley University.
This conference will present many examples from around the world of how the arts have played a major role during this time of Covid-19 to address the pervasive complex feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear, while eliciting hope and resilience. The presentations, by Lesley faculty and alumni, will demonstrate how the arts have provided support, comfort, and solace during this time of collective stress, addressing mental, physical, and spiritual health.
This event is free and open to the public, join us virtually April 10, from 12-3 pm EST. Register on Zoom.
Presentations Include:
- “Voces arts and healing: Working with asylum seekers in Juarez Mexico” with Greta Bro, Mitchell Kossak, Kelvin Ramirez, & Stan Strickland
- “Poetry/Creative Arts Therapy in a Carceral setting: Embedded Wings” with Barbara Bethea
- “Time of Butterflies: Using the Arts to Help Create Paths For Healing” with Giselle Bonilla
- "Finding Hope: The Experience of Being a Creative Arts Therapist at Bellevue Hospital During the Pandemic" with Yu-Ying Chen
- “The Art of Resilience in Sickness and Death” with Michal Lev
- "Micro Practices for Macro Times" with Ruth Yeo Peterman
- "Tears of Blue & Gold: Ukraine" with Nathalie Robelot
- “Embodied Digital Storytelling addressing ancestral trauma” with Giselle Ruzany
- “Bravery in Public Space: The Use of Murals to Engage Healing Narratives in Medellin, Colombia” with Laura Smith
- "The Aging and Integrative Pain Assessment and Management Initiative: A Collaborative Video Project” with Raquel Stephenson
- “'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick': Reflections on the value of the creative arts in adapting to change and holding adversity” with Nataly Wollett
- “Creative arts therapies and anxiety: Social, community and clinical contexts” with Rebecca Zarate
**Optional 3 CE Hours* for LMHC’s and NCC’s are available for FREE.
**LMHC CE’s sponsored by Lesley University Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences Professional Counseling Programs. Lesley University Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences Professional Counseling Programs have been approved by the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC)** as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 4472. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The Institute for Arts and Health at Lesley University is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
About the speakers:
Barbara Bethea, MA, PTR, LCAT, CASAC is the first African American Registered Poetry Therapist certified through the IFBPT, licensed by New York State;first African American Mentor-Supervisor for IFBPT; first Black past-President NAPT; currently employed at New York City Health and Hospitals as director of the Creative Art Therapy Department-Correctional Health Services; PhD student in Lesley University’s Expressive Therapy program; author of "Writing Away the Demons."
Giselle Bonilla founded Time Of Butterflies with her sister, Kat Bonilla, to provide support and services for women of color who have experienced abuse and/or other trauma. Giselle obtained her bachelor's in Psychology from Providence College and her master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a Specialization in Expressive Arts Therapy from Lesley University. Her expressive arts therapy capstone thesis focused on therapy work with survivors of abuse. The title of her thesis is "Healing the Body through Awareness, and Expression: The Polyvagal Theory and the Expressive Arts in Therapy with Women Who Have Been Abused." Giselle is certified in Reiki, Reflexology, and Trauma-Informed Yoga. Giselle believes that the mind and the body are strongly connected and that they need each other in order to heal. She is currently a Mental Health Clinician/ Expressive Arts therapist at Italian Home for Children and does outpatient individual therapy and in-home therapy.
Greta Bro, M.A., is a psycho-spiritual therapist and mentor, music and sound therapist, workshop leader, writer, and singer/songwriter. She brings thirty-five years’ experience to her work with complex trauma using a range of approaches that include holistic counseling, qigong, meditation, energy medicine, music therapy and depth psychology. She performs her original music in the US, Europe and Brazil offering concerts that combine jazz and world-soul. She has extensive experience as a presenter and has led seminars on music and sound therapy, and shamanic improvisation at Wheelock College, Lesley University and UMass, Boston. She is also one of the co-founders of Voces Arts and Healing.
Yu-Ying Chen, PhD, LCAT, MT-BC, is a music therapist and creative arts therapist supervisor at Bellevue Hospital in New York. He has worked with clients in different settings, including inpatient psychiatry and private practice. He has published and presented on immigrants and music therapy and the use of music therapy in mental health care.
Mitchell Kossak, Ph.D., REAT, LMHC, is a professor and co-director of the Institute for Arts and Health in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences at Lesley University. He is the coordinator of the expressive therapy specialization and is the former division director for Expressive Therapies. He has also been the international coordinator for the Expressive Therapies program in Israel since 1999. He has worked as an expressive arts therapist since 1983 and has been a licensed clinical counselor since 1994. His clinical work combines expressive arts therapies with body-centered approaches with a variety of populations. In addition, he has worked extensively with autistic children and adults. He has written about and presented his research on rhythmic attunement, improvisation, psychospiritual and community-based approaches to working with trauma and embodied states of consciousness at conferences nationally and internationally. He is the former executive co-chair for the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA) and the associate editor of The Journal of Applied Arts and Health. He is also a professional jazz musician, performing for the past 30 years in the Boston area.
Michal Lev, PhD, LCAT, CMFT is a board-certified art therapist, supervisor, and certified family psychotherapist. She is a member of the executive committee and board of IACAET as well as the editorial board member of CAET. Within her role as assistant professor tenure at the graduate art therapy program at Ono Academic College in Israel, she promotes art-based pedagogy and research with her students and advisees. She is a social activist, artist, and entrepreneur, who maintains artmaking for innovation, inquiry and knowledge. In her established private practice for couples and families, Dr. Lev incorporates expressive therapies to deal with intimacy issues and to promote wellbeing. Her published articles and book chapters focus on intimacy, art-based research, and creative-process-oriented pedagogy.
Vivien Marcow Speiser, PhD, REAT, LMHC, NCC, BC-DMT, is a professor emerita in Dance and Expressive Therapy and co-director of the Institute for Arts and Health in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences at Lesley University. She is a licensed mental health counselor, a dance therapist, and an expressive arts therapist and educator. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholar and Salzburg Global Seminar award. Her work has allowed her unparalleled access to working with groups across the United States, Israel, and internationally. She has used the arts as a way of communicating across borders and across cultures and believes in the power of the arts to create the conditions for personal and social change and transformation. As the former founder and director of the Arts Institute Project in Israel, she has been influential in the development of expressive arts therapy in that country. Her current interests are in working with communities under duress, trauma through the arts, and cross-cultural conflict transformation. She is a co-editor of "The Arts, Education, and Social Change: Little Signs of Hope" published by Peter Lang.
Kelvin Ramirez, Ph.D., is a Board-Certified Registered Art Therapist (ATR-BC) and core faculty member of the Expressive Therapies Division at Lesley University, with a dual appointment in Global Interdisciplinary Studies where he coordinates with a selected team of faculty to deliver customized curricular content for Nicaraguan educators. Kelvin is a Board Member of FNE International, a 501(c)3 organization that partners with communities in developing nations to identify opportunities to advance housing, health and education. Dr. Ramirez continues to collaborate and develop programs with educators, clinicians, and community leaders in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and India.
Giselle Ruzany Ph.D. LPC is a psychotherapist and embodied art-based/movement researcher located in Washington, D.C. She has a master's in Somatic Psychology with a concentration in Dance/Movement Therapy, post-graduate certifications in Gestalt Therapy and EMDR, and a Ph.D. in Expressive Arts Therapy. For more information, visit www.gestaltdance.com.
Nathalie Robelot MA, ET, LMHC candidate, Nathalie Robelot received her master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a specialization in intermodal Expressive Arts Therapy from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a professional member of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association [IEATA] and the European Federation of Art Therapy [EFAT]. Most of her life was spent cross-culturally (as a ‘third culture kid’) between Belgium, France, The United States, and the last eight years in Kyiv, Ukraine. More recently she is based in the Boston area. Robelot has over a decade of clinical experience working with groups, individuals, and families within a variety of settings as well as cultures. She has expertise working with individuals facing challenges related to self-worth, acculturation, complex trauma, crisis, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, family conflict, and interpersonal difficulties. Most recently, Robelot launched a new initiative entitled First Aid of the Soul, which offers free psychosocial and emotional support services to those being affected by Russia’s war against Ukraine. Through this initiative and call to action, Robelot gathered a team of professionally trained mental health counselors (experienced in working with trauma, crisis, disaster relief, and war) from all around the world. First Aid of the Soul offers peer support groups, psychoeducational materials in three languages, chat rooms, and trainings for mental health professionals. The initiative continues to evolve and will only keep developing as the need for psychosocial support for Ukraine is now.
Laura Smith, M.A. (she/her/ella), is an expressive arts therapist and arts educator deeply committed to nurturing individual and collective growth and healing through creativity. She has designed and facilitated creative processes with schools, communities, and individuals for over a decade throughout the United States and its southern border, Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. Her work uses myriad expressive resources, including community murals, peace-making circles, visual art experiential, and therapeutic drumming, to promote healing, dialogue, and transformation. For the past seven years she worked as a mural artist and art therapist at Raw Art Works in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she has held space for young leaders to support social change through their own healing process. She is currently a Fulbright Researcher in Medellin, Colombia, exploring the role of art in public spaces as a tool for healing and social change. Laura is part of a global street art movement called Girls to the Front that allows women and girls around the world to use murals and graffiti to create new narratives about themselves using public art as a vehicle. Laura's murals and arts initiatives can be seen in Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Kenya, Colombia, Brazil, China, as well as Somerville, Cambridge, Lynn, and Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Dr. Raquel Stephenson is a board-certified, registered art therapist and a licensed creative arts therapist. She joined Lesley in 2013 as a core faculty member of the Department of Graduate Expressive Therapies in the Art Therapy Program. Committed to improving the lives of older adults through the arts, Dr. Stephenson’s work has focused on a wide spectrum of older populations. She was co-founder and teaching artist for the Teaching Artist, Creative Approaches to Healthy Aging program, funded by two National Endowment for the Arts ArtWorks Grants, and founder, clinical supervisor, and program director of New York University’s Creative Aging Therapeutic Services. Raquel consults with emerging clinical art therapy programs worldwide and designed and implemented the first creative arts therapy program for older adults with dementia in Estonia. Raquel serves on the National Advisory Council and Program Advisory Committee of Arts for the Aging in Rockville, MD, and the Advisory Council of the Art Therapy Project in New York City. She also serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Creativity and Human Development.
Stan Strickland, M.A., has served as co-executive and artistic director of Express Yourself, an organization that works with at risk youth though performance arts (https://www.exyo.org/). Singer, saxophonist, actor, and flautist, Stan has performed extensively throughout the US, Europe, the Caribbean, and New Zealand. He conducts workshops in voice and movement therapy internationally. He has helped more than 7000 students create a grand culminating performance after year-long residencies now center stage at the Citi Wang Theater. He is the recipient of the 2007 Eliot Norton Award for Best Individual Performance. He currently teaches in the Master’s Program at Lesley University and Berklee College of Music.
Dr. Nataly Woollett is a South African therapist and researcher, trained in the fields of psychology, play therapy, and art therapy. She started practicing in NYC after 09/11 and has worked in multiple contexts. Nataly has an interest in the use of evidence-based treatment interventions that can be taken to scale in resource-limited settings that can address disease burdens of mental health, HIV and violence. She is actively involved in establishing art therapy degrees in South Africa and creating opportunity for art therapists to address these complex problems in a developing context.
Ruth Yeo-Peterman (she/her) is a trainer, facilitator, and licensed mental health counselor with a specialization in expressive arts therapies. Her work is an ongoing inquiry into socio-ecological approaches to wellbeing and the democratisation of the expressive arts therapies for working with trauma and supporting collective health. She has significant experience in diverse international contexts and is currently on a global capacity building project with human rights defenders in exile.
Dr. Rebecca Zarate is a music psychotherapist, musician, researcher, and educator of music therapy and the arts therapies. Her research focuses on social anxiety and improvisation-based music therapy with young adults. Rebecca is interested in the clinical, social, and cultural intersections of anxiety, and writes and presents on this from clinical, critical, and cultural perspectives. She is dedicated to translating clinical and educational knowledge of music as a health mechanism into the greater community through the intersections of cross-discipline, interdisciplinary collaborations, and arts technologies. This is reflected in her teaching and pedagogy of art therapies research. Her music and health research lab includes faculty and students in expressive therapies who work together on the inquiry of music and arts, and the global social issues of the rising impact of anxiety and stress. Projects have included addressing manipulation of truth, “Alternative Facts,” and the Me/2 movement. The lab addresses the impact of using a critically conscious lens in aesthetics as a transformative tool for clinical and performance pedagogy. This includes her own concept of “collective anxiety” and music-centered technique of tracking moments of interest, mediators, and mechanisms of change, and transitions within clinical improvisation and critical social aesthetics frame.