At the beginning of this new year & decade, the idea of creating an art therapy & technology digital time capsule seemed like it would be a fun and collaborative project to invite current art therapists and future art therapists to participate in! This digital time capsule is an opportunity to document our relationship and activities with technology in 2020 as art therapists and re-visit the responses 10 years from now in 2030. As this time capsule project begins to take shape with contributions, sharing some of the questions & responses from the art therapy community also makes this process fun!

This first blog post features examples from art therapists about how they use current technology in 2020 as an art therapist. Responses are divided into seven areas and includes practices, tools, platforms, software, and activities related to therapeutic work, administrative tasks, learning & professional development, research, teaching & education, as well as professional connection and the art therapist’s own creative practice.

 Professional practice with clients:

• Online group work, digital art therapy, telehealth & teletherapy, virtual reality
• Populations: Young adults living w/ cancer, adolescents, older adults
• Chatrooms, Skype Business, InTouch
• Playing music via phone, using a customized, appropriate playlist created on Pandora
• Setting timer(s) on phone for managing group time
• Recommending, encouraging mental health apps for clients to use

Professional practice administrative tasks:

• Photographing client art to insert digitally into their electronic medical record
• Scheduling, Calendar use
• Documentation: treatment plans, client notes, billing
• Theranest, GoogleDocs
• Social media (FB) for promoting practice, events
• Professional website

Professional development, learning:

• Accessing the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) journal online
• Purchasing books online (i.e. Amazon)
• Online CEUs
• AATA Conference app

 Research:

• Conduct research, project collaboration
• Search online for literature, directives, news/research about art therapy
• Dropbox, GoogleDocs, Twitter

Teaching, Education, Supervision:

• Online course teaching via Blackboard. Moodle
• Teaching graduate art therapy students about digital art therapy
• Online supervision via Skype, Zoom, WebEx

Professional Connection:

• Finding, sharing information and resources about art therapy
• Promoting art therapy to others
• Network with other art therapists, colleagues
• Communicate with colleagues, art therapy friends via email, text
• Communicate with national and state art therapy associations, professional organizations
• Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Art Therapist Creative Expression:

• Digital & virtual painting
• Virtual reality
• Finding inspiration
• Sharing own art via social media (i.e. Instagram)
• ArtRage, altering photos

Contribute to our digital time capsule! What are some examples of how you use technology as an art therapist in 2020? Leave your responses below in the comments section!