Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the place and land that has inspired this work. We express respect for country, for its Aboriginal custodians and for its elders past and present, recognising their strength, resilience and extraordinary capacities.
This book, a collective endeavour, has come together with the support of many people at various times. We wish to acknowledge all those who have played a part in its history and delivery.
First and foremost we are extremely grateful to all our contributing authors who have managed to sustain their enthusiasm and demonstrated immense patience whilst we brought this book to fruition.
Our friend and colleague Dr Pam Johnston, who profoundly influenced three of the current editors through her contributions towards the decolonising of art therapy education at the (then) University of Western Sydney (UWS) and who was a key participant in our early conversations with potential contributors to this book. Pam tragically died during the project before she could fully take up the role of co-editor or rewrite her iconic paper as a book chapter. We are grateful to her children and family for giving permission for us to include Pam’s work in its original form.
Professor Bronwyn Davies for her long-term encouragement of this project and for a prologue that offers an imaginative point of departure for each reader’s voyage through these pages. And Dr Lynn Kapitan for the epilogue – a broad, sparkling harbour of wisdom, wherein to ‘dock ship’ and reflect upon the journey.
We are totally indebted to Paul Manning and Julie Graves for their artistic collaboration and ground-breaking creative design of the whole book which we believe has propelled us into new art therapy territory. Chris Brown for his skill and patience indexing the book. And Michel Lokhorst, Brill | Sense publisher, for taking on and staying with this visually ambitious project.
Associate Professor Keith Bennett, former Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the UWS who enabled so much of the work of this book to happen, including Andy Gilroy’s Research Fellowships. Also, Associate Professor Adrian Carr, Professor Dennis Del Favero and Ms Joanna Barnes, key founders and supporters of art therapy since the early 1990s who made space for art therapy to flourish at the UWS. To what is now Western Sydney University, and in particular Professor Kevin Dunn, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Psychology, for his generous vision of art therapy and unstinting support of this project.
Goldsmiths, University of London, especially the former Department of Professional and Community Education (PACE) who occasionally allowed Andy to escape, and the current Department of Social Therapeutic and Community Studies (STaCS) for their support of Jill and Andy’s continuing collaboration with Australian colleagues and friends. In particular to Susan Williams in PACE, now STaCS, for her ongoing administrative support and diligent transcription skills.
With gratitude to the multiple communities of arts therapies practice, research and scholarship at Edith Cowan University and to the teachers who inhabited and continue to inhabit this and other spaces whilst passing on their knowledge in supervision, teaching, researching and art-making. Deep thanks to the many colleagues travelling the path of arts as life.
To international and Australian colleagues and friends of the arts therapies who have enabled the deepening of our understanding and given us the opportunity to expand our knowledge of the path we are all on – to the awakening of encounter! To ANATA and ANZATA, a thank you for bringing us to another space.
Each of these people, places and organisations have been navigation points in the making of this book; together they form a constellation of our guiding stars.
Andy, Sheridan, Tarquam and Jill November 2018