Overview
Creative arts therapy and arts in health have evolved along distinct trajectories, each with its own history, professional identity, and application in clinical, community, and cultural contexts. In recent years, these fields have become increasingly intersected, creating new opportunities for collaboration and mutual enrichment. This global webinar, part of the IACAET Arts & Health Global Series, brings together leading voices to examine the shared values, unique contributions, and complementary practices of these disciplines. Through presentations, a panel discussion, and open dialogue, participants will explore how these fields can work together to advance human health, well-being, and cultural vitality.

Date: Saturday, January 10, 2026

Time: 9AM EST (New York), 3PM CET (Berlin), 10PM (Beijing), 10PM (Perth)

Online (Zoom)

To easily convert the time to your local time zone, please use this World Time Buddy tool.

**This event will be recorded. Registrants will receive the recording link via email after the live session.**

Objectives
By the end of this session, participants will:

1. Understand the historical and conceptual foundations of both creative arts therapy and arts in health.
2. Identify similarities and differences in the principles, practices, and professional frameworks of the two fields.
3. Explore innovative models for cross-disciplinary collaboration in diverse settings.
4. Reflect on how integration can expand accessibility, cultural relevance, and impact globally.

Format

• Presentations by each panelist
• Panel discussion addressing core questions and emerging trends
• Open dialogue with input from multiple disciplines and regions

Panelists 

• Dr. Rebecca Zarate (USA) – Professor, University of Utah 
• Dr. Nisha Sajnani (USA) – Professor, New York University; Co-Director, Jameel Arts & Health Lab
• Dr. Mitchell Kossak (USA) – Professor, Lesley University (TBC)

• Dr. Margo Fuchs Knill (Switzerland) – Professor, European Graduate School 
• Devika Mehta (India) – Program Director, Expressive Arts Therapy, St.Xavier’s College
• Dr. Val Huet (UK) – President, IACAET

Curators

• Prof. Vivien Marcow Speiser (USA)
• Dr. Tony Yu Zhou (Netherlands/China)

Target Audience

This webinar is designed for professionals, educators, practitioners, and researchers working at the intersection of arts, health, and well-being — including creative arts therapists, medical professionals, community arts workers, policy makers, and students interested in the field.

Registration

[Registration link here]

About the Series

The IACAET Arts & Health Global Series offers a platform for dialogue among global leaders in the arts, health, and education fields. Each webinar fosters cross-cultural exchange, bridges research and practice, and explores the integration of arts into health and well-being worldwide.

Curators

Vivien Speiser

Vivien Speiser is the Co-Director and Professor Emerita of the Institute for Arts and Health in The Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, Lesley University. She is also a Distinguished Research Associate in the Drama for Life Program at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a licensed mental health counselor, a dance therapist and an expressive arts therapist and educator. Her work has allowed her unparalleled access to working with groups across the United States, Israel and internationally. Prof Speiser is a recipient of 3 Fulbright Senior Scholar awards as well as several lifetime achievement awards from international professional associations.

Dr. Zhou holds a doctoral degree in biomedicine and has been working and living in China and Europe for many years.  He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Inspirees Education Group（Netherlands/China). Though trained as a scientist, he has been greatly intrigued by modern dance and dance therapy since 2002 and has played an important role in driving the development of dance therapy and creative arts therapies in China.  Dr. Zhou serves on an international advisory board for the journal Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy. He founded Inspirees Institute and Creative Arts Education and Therapy (CAET) – Eastern and Western Perspectives, the international open access journal. He is also a certified movement analyst (CMA) trained by LIMS in New York. Dr. Zhou is the team leader for the Chinese Group of Arts Therapy, Chinese Psychological Society, Guest Professor of Beijing Normal University, Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts, Co-founder and core member of the World Alliance of Dance Movement Therapy (WADMT). He is the founding member and CEO of the International Association of Creative Arts in Education and Therapy (IACAET).

Speakers

Mitchell Kossak Ph.D., LMHC, REAT, is a Professor in Expressive Therapies and Counseling at Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the Past President of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association and recipient of the Shining Star, lifetime achievement award.  He is also the Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Arts and Health. He is the author of Attunement in expressive arts therapy: Toward an understanding of embodied empathy.  In 2019 he helped to create Voces Arts and Healing, to work with asylum seekers in Juarez Mexico. Dr. Kossak is also a professional musician, performing for the past 40 years in the Boston area.

In this webinar, Mitchell will focus on the history of creative arts therapies and his involvement in the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA) and the National Organization of Arts and Health’s (NOAH) Core Professional Competencies.  

Dr Val Huet (PhD) qualified as an Art Therapist in 1986 and later trained as a Group Psychotherapist and Organisational Consultant. In 2015, she completed a PhD on art therapy groups for work-related stress.  Dr Huet was the Chief Executive Officer of the British Association of Art Therapists from 2003 to 2021 and is co-director of the Oxford College of Arts and Therapies, an online training organisation.  She is a Visiting Professor at Hertfordshire and Ulster Universities. She is currently involved in several research projects, including online art therapy groups for fibromyalgia and an international arts therapies project on child labour. Throughout her career, Dr Huet has worked in partnership with Creative Health (Arts in Health) organisations. In this webinar, Dr Huet will describe how, in the UK, an initially oppositional culture between arts therapies and creative health was challenged and improved for the benefit of all concerned, including clients.  She will also reflect on rising concerns about current social and political trends, such as protectionism, reflected in contemporary discourse.

Prof. Margo Fuchs Knill, Ph.D., is a pioneer in the field of intermodal expressive arts. Trained as an elementary school teacher in Switzerland, she studied Education and Special Education with a minor in Anthropological Psychology at the University of Zurich and completed training in gestalt therapy at the Fritz Perls Institute in Germany. She later pursued advanced graduate studies in Intermodal Expressive Arts Psychotherapy at Lesley College, Cambridge, MA, under Shaun McNiff, and earned her doctorate in Psychology and the Arts at Union Graduate School, Ohio. From 1983 to 1995, she taught in the pioneering Expressive Therapies Graduate Program at Lesley University. 

At the European Graduate School (EGS), Prof. Fuchs Knill served as a founding dean and core faculty member. She guided the development of the Masters programs in Expressive Arts Therapy, Coaching & Consulting, and Conflict Transformation & Peacebuilding (1996–2017), and was Dean of the Division of Arts, Health and Society from 2017 to 2023. She continues to teach, advise and supervise doctoral students, while contributing internationally through guest professorships in Europe, North America, Asia, and South America. 

Her academic and clinical work centers on intermodal expressive arts therapy, art-based research, supervision, coaching, and curriculum development.  Alongside her teaching and leadership, she has maintained an expressive arts psychotherapy practice since 1980. He approach is poetic, resource-oriented, and phenomenological, building on Knill’s concept of Intermodal Decentering (IDEC®).

Dr. Rebecca Zarate is a Professor of Arts and Health, and Associate Dean for Research at College of Fine Arts, the University of Utah. She was an associate professor of music therapy in the department of Expressive Therapies at Lesley University, USA with 27 years of practice and research in mental health and trauma – informed music therapy. She is a music psychotherapist, musician, researcher, and educator of music therapy and the arts therapies. Her research focuses on anxiety and improvisation-based music therapy and she has secured several program and research development grants. Dr. Zarate 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 the author of Music Psychotherapy and Anxiety in Social, Community, and Clinical Contexts (published in 2022). She directs the Lab for Anxiety and Music psychotherapy (LAMp) and is dedicated to translating clinical and educational knowledge of music as a sustainable health mechanism.

Devika Mehta Kadam is a registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist (R-DMP) with a comprehensive background in expressive arts and clinical practice. She currently serves as the Program Head for the Post Graduate Diploma in Expressive Arts Therapy at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and is also a faculty member for Diploma courses in Dance Movement Therapy. Ms. Mehta Kadam is the Co-Founder of ‘Synchrony’ (www.synchronyindia.com), an organization dedicated to providing mental health services and creative arts-based training across diverse populations. She holds significant international roles, including being a Founding Board Member of the Indian Association of Dance Movement Therapy (www.iadmt.org) and the Regional Director (Asia) and Executive Board Member for the International Association of Creative Arts in Education and Training (www.iacaet.org). A dedicated scholar, she is a current PhD candidate at The University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and holds three Master’s degrees in Dance Movement Therapy, Applied Psychology (Clinical), and Indian Folk Dance. As a published author and researcher, she has represented her work at international conferences across the USA and Europe, with her research focusing on embodied indigenous knowledge, decolonising bodies, and neurorehabilitation.

Professor Nisha Sajnani is Director of the NYU Steinhardt Graduate Program in Drama Therapy, Director of the Arts & Health initiative at NYU, and Founding Co-Director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, established in collaboration with the World Health Organization, to measurably improve lives through the arts. Through the Lab, she consults with city and country governments, cultural institutions, and academic centres, to map and mobilize the arts as a health resource. Professor Sajnani has been published widely and leads the Jameel Arts & Health Lab– Lancet Global Series on the Health Benefits of the Arts, in collaboration with Dr. Nils Fietje at the WHO Regional Office for Europe. An award-winning author, educator, and advocate, her body of work explores the unique ways in which aesthetic experience can inspire equity and care in service of public and planetary health.