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Fall 2008 Newsletter

From the President

Dear PATA members,

I am very excited to announce that Deborah Bunkley, MA will be our President Elect!

I would like to share the PATA board's continued commitment to its members. Due to the struggles that the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) has experienced, PATA wanted to ensure that we were also meeting the needs of our members. Before discussing PATA's plan, I will provide a brief overview of the events in AATA. As many of you know, AATA has been going through a period of organizational transition for the past two years, and a number of AATA members have had concerns about the AATA board of directors (BOD). In June 2008, Judith Rubin, HLM and past AATA president, offered to coordinate a neutral and investigative Task Force. The mission of this Task Force was to interview the stakeholders, summarize the findings, and make recommendations to the BOD. The Task Force provided a thorough, thoughtful, and well written report to the BOD and membership in June 2008. I emailed this report to the PATA membership through our yahoo group. If you would like to review the report and did not receive it or were unable to download the attachment, please email me.

The PATA board values the trust, respect, and investment of our membership. To fortify this relationship, the board has identified three areas to improve. Firstly, we are dedicated to revising and following our bylaws and chapter manual to better meet the needs of our organization. Our second focus has been on providing improved programming with a focus on issues of diversity, as spearheaded by Elva Anderson, M.P.S., A.T.R, Multicultural committee chair and Sheryl Jaffe, M.A., Programming committee chair. This year, we have offered two programs, and we will continue to offer additional events. Thirdly, the board has agreed to improve our communications with the membership. In the past newsletter, I shared that we have a PATA blog to help with this effort. Diana Sabbados, M.A., ATR– BC, our Chapter Delegate and Publications committee chair has also revised our printed literature. We also hope to make our website more user-friendly and current.

The PATA board is committed to building a strong connected art therapy community. We invite your ideas, suggestions, and feedback. We also look forward to your partnership. Most of all, we thank you for your past, current, and future support.

In revitalizing the Washington, DC metro area art therapy community,

Amy Tatsumi, M.A., A.T.R.