Imagining Windmills

Imagining Windmills presents a compilation of scholarly chapters by selected authors of global standing in the arts therapies.

This book reflects the theme of the 15th International Conference of the European Consortium for Arts Therapies (ECArTE), held in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes. This innovative work seeks to further understanding of arts therapy education, practice and research and incorporates current thinking from art therapists, dance-movement therapists, dramatherapists and music therapists. Writers from Belgium, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA combine to give an international voice to the book, which celebrates cultural distinctiveness, while also presenting shared intercultural developments in the professions. This interdisciplinary publication explores questions of the unknown and the imagined, misconception, delusion, truth and trust in the arts therapies. It enquires into ways in which education and the practice of the arts therapies engage with the imagination as a place of multiple realities, which may lead us closer to finding our truth.

This book will be of interest and relevance not only to those in the arts therapeutic community, but also to a broad audience including those in related professions – for instance psychology, sociology, the arts, medicine, health and wellbeing and education.

Marián Cao is an Art Therapist and Professor of Art Education and Art Therapy at the University Complutense of Madrid, Spain. She teaches and lectures in Spain and internationally. Founder director of the AT master’s programme at University Complutense of Madrid, and former director of the Ph.D. programme on Art, Art Therapy and Social Inclusion, she has coordinated several Latinoamerican University programmes.

Richard Hougham is Principal Lecturer at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London where he is course leader of the MA Drama and Movement Therapy programme. He is Chair of the Executive Board of European Consortium of Arts Therapies Education (ECArTE) and has a particular interest in intercultural dialogues and epistemology in the international teaching of the arts therapies.

Sarah Scoble is Honorary President of ECArTE. She served on the Executive Board of ECArTE for over twenty years and was Chair from 2009 to 2017. Founder trainer in southwest UK in Dramatherapy and former director of Masters in Dramatherapy programmes, University of Exeter, she is Series Editor with Diane Waller for the annual International Research in the Arts Therapies publication with Routledge, in association with ECArTE and the International Centre for Research in Arts Therapies (ICRA), Imperial College, London.