ACA 2007 International Conference

Conference Presentations and Presenters
2007 ACA International Conference
March 21 - 23, 2007 with pre-Conference Institutes - March 20, 2007
in Austin, Texas

Roberta Shoemaker-Beal, MFA, ATR has been an art therapy clinician for 30 years, trained at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, while forming the clinical art psychotherapy programs there. As an art therapy theoretician and educator, teaching posts began at Towson University, Baltimore Maryland, then as director of the Art Therapy Institute programs at Mount Mary College, Wisconsin, with work at Emporia State University, the College of Notre Dame, Belmont, California, and, more recently at Texas State University-San Marcos. Her current teaching post is with the Saint Mary of the Woods College, a unique Graduate Art Therapy Program for pioneering art therapists across the country. She has given lectures, presentations, work and play~shops at AATA Conferences and to groups across the country on creativity dynamics.

In the professional community, Roberta served as the first chairperson of the Maryland Art Therapy Association (MATA). As she began her journey woman work across the country in art therapy, she became active in the Kansas’s KATA, then Louisiana’s LATA, while in New Orleans, LA. Most recently, she has served as president of the South Texas ATA, for two terms.

Roberta has served twice on the Board of Directors of the American Art Therapy Association, after working with the AATA Publications Committee, as editor and publisher of the first AATA Proceedings. In response to patient needs, she developed a creativity work~playbook for self motivated learners called the Creative Expressive Journal, a safe place to express yourself. Currently being re-published as Express Yourself!!! Various writings appear in a compilation called Art Therapy Resources.

Studies of creativity curriculums reflect demographics; that is, each different demographic group wishes to advance different definitions of creativity for specific purposes. In general, corporations wish more productivity from their management and employees, the military wishes a high level of awareness and flexibility under stress for quick decision making, with education advancing creative problems solving and critical thinking skills, often for gifted and talents students, while some branches of psychotherapy, especially the newly evolving Positive Psychology, bases their approaches in treatment toward wellness and the development of creative potential, toward “peak experiences.” Where do artists and creative arts people fit in? The current societal phase of deconstruction and war calls forth the creativity teacher to help people move trough difficult times of transition. From the Freudian influence stating one has to be “crazy to be creative,” across to those theorists who say, “Creativity is the highest form of functioning,” where do the best creativity teaching components lie? A creativity continuum for a range of creativity goals is proposed to survey creativity teachers among ACA members to develop a core curriculum for creativity studies.

Each participant will be able to:

identify the need for creativity teachers in the current societal phase of cultural deconstruction, based on historian and economist Strauss and Howe in the Fourth Turning?
define different variations on creativity teaching, by being updated on “creativity” developments, to clarify their role as a creativity teacher where services are needed?
understand “the big picture” along a continuum of creativity goals to define one’s teaching style, reflecting Bloom’s taxonomy and directive/non-directive style choices