Call for participation: Art and Art Therapy ‘Shared Experience Sessions’ by Smiling Dog Collective

Smiling Dog are exploring the contemporary significance of artists and arts therapists working in healthcare settings, for an article to be published in 2025.

The collective is made up of artist Marie Brett, art therapist John McHarg, and Ed Kuczaj, art therapist and former Head of the Department of Arts in Health & Education, MTU CCAD.

Keen to include voices from the field in their research, they are issuing an open call to practitioners to attend a facilitated online event, as a means to sharing thinking and experience. All contributions will be credited.

Smiling Dog have considerable arts and health experience and this new work builds on their previous paper ‘Working On The Edge: Exploring the Role of an Art Therapist compared to The Role of an Artist in Arts and Health Contexts – Similarities, Differences and Requirements.’

How to participate
To book a free place, please email smilingdogproject@gmail.com saying which Zoom session you would like to attend on Thursday 27 February:

• Artists: 11am-12.30pm
• Art therapists: 7-8.30pm

About Smiling Dog Collective 
The Smiling Dog Collective (artist Marie Brett and art therapists John McHarg and Ed Kuczaj) investigates how art and art therapy coexist, and what each does in companionship and/or contention in participatory and healthcare contexts.

Together they have helped to inform and shape arts and health practice in Ireland over the last 15 years with special reference to ‘dialogues of opposition’ – referring to the similarities, differences and overlaps in their respective practices of artist and art therapist, within participatory and healthcare contexts. Their new working title ‘Smiling Dog’ references the three-headed Cerberus and symbolises how they are looking to what’s past, current and future, from three distinct headsets.