ABSTRACT
During the 1940s and 1950s, the idea had gradually been spread that art could be used in the treatment of emotional and physical disorders, so that, by the end of the 1950s, many artists and art teachers had begun to work in general and psychiatric hospitals, and in sanatoriums under the National Health Service. A movement had also developed in the private health sector, at the Withymead Centre, where art – including visual, dance, and dramatic art – was used as an adjunct to psychotherapy. There had been some attempts to form an association in the early 1950s but these had not succeeded, so individuals had continued to work on their own, with occasional meetings, usually on the occasion of exhibitions of art therapy. There was increasing dissatisfaction on the part of these artists and art teachers about the difficulties they encountered in working, not least in having poor physical conditions and rates of pay which could vary from those of ‘cleaners’ to those of ‘adult education tutors’. The idea of an association had become increasingly attractive, together with the possibility of art therapists being recognised as a new occupational (or ‘professional’) group.
