66 • Introduction to Art Therapy
Canadian art therapy also had its indigenous pioneers—like Marie Revai (D), who was
art therapist at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal; Louise Annett, who ran a sheltered
workshop for developmentally challenged “craftsmen”; and psychiatrist Martin Fischer, who
founded the Toronto Art Therapy Institute. Because of Canada’s vast size, many worked for
long periods in isolation, like Selwyn Dewdney, who was the art therapist at a psychiatric
hospital in London, Ontario, from 1947 to 1972. He and his wife Irene, who joined him in
1956, published several papers during the 1960s in the Bulletin of Art Therapy, which are
found in edited collections of important articles (Ulman & Dachinger, 1975; Ulman & Levy,
1981). Art therapy is currently alive and well in all regions of Canada, with associations and
training programs in each area (Edwards, 2004).
While the growth of art therapy in other countries has been slower than in the United
States, recent decades have seen the development of budding programs around the globe. In
the Netherlands, creative therapy has been practiced since the 1950s, with formal training
since 1980. It seems to be largely an art as therapy approach, in contrast to Finland, where
psychoanalysts have supported its development as an art psychotherapy approach.
In Japan the founding fathers were psychiatrists, like Dr. Tokuda, who themselves had been
working with art in therapy since the 1950s. However, despite the continuing dominance
of psychiatrists in Japanese art therapy for many years, an International Conference on the
Creative Arts Therapies, organized by Japanese art therapists in that country and living in
the United States, was held in Tokyo in October of 2006, creating significant momentum.
In addition to a 2008 publication in Japanese with edited papers from the conference,^1 there
have been study groups in various parts of the country, and efforts to create training pro-
grams (E).
It seems that even if the seeds were planted early in other countries, most have taken lon-
ger to germinate than in the United States. For example, in France the Association Française
de Recherches et Applications des Techniques Artistiques en Pedagogie et Medicine was
formed in 1974, yet it was not until 1988 that the Federation Française des Arts-Therapeutes
was born.
Even before the computer revolutionized globalization via the Internet, two important
vehicles for communication among art therapists around the world were created—one by an
American practitioner who became aware of the need in her travels, and the other by a group
of European educational institutions who wanted to support each other in training. In 1989
California art therapist Bobbi Stoll (F) created a much-needed structure by founding the
International Networking Group of Art Therapists (ING/AT), which sponsors a newsletter
with correspondents in almost every country around the globe (www.converse.edu/ingat).
The European Consortium for Arts Therapies Education ( E C A rT E) formed in 1991 has
held international conferences every other year in different countries, and has published
proceedings as well. The European Advisory Board of National Art Therapist Associations
met for the first time in 1993 in Germany, with the goal of working “on the recognition
of the different arts therapies professions.” The British agreed to develop “a questionnaire
to determine the current situation of art therapy in a given participating country.” These
developments are reminiscent of the early stages of information-gathering and organizing
among art therapists in the United States, an impression confirmed during the last two con-
ferences sponsored by ECArTE (cf. Waller, 1998).
Currently, communication is becoming possible with some societies formerly closed to
the West. In Russia, a meeting of expressive therapists from the United States and Europe
was held in 1993, and a conference on the arts in psychotherapy and other fields in 1995.