PREFACE BY SALLY ATKINS 23
supervision and organizational development. In the 1980s, my
colleagues in the Appalachian Expressive Arts Collective and I began
to create an interdisciplinary graduate program in expressive arts
therapy. Then, in 2000, we discovered that our work, developed
independently, was part of a larger international movement in the
expressive arts. At that time I also began a 17-year career of teaching
at the European Graduate School, the international center for
thinking and practice in the field. My years of teaching, research and
therapy practice, and my interdisciplinary and cross-cultural work in
expressive arts at Appalachian, at EGS and around the world, have
expanded my appreciation for the role of language, culture and the
arts in understanding our human experience. These opportunities
have fueled my continued interest in multicultural, integrative and
interdisciplinary work. Still, the grounding of my work remains in
my own intimate relationship with the land in which I live.