New voices for an evolving profession

The contribution of writing by trainees, newly qualified practitioners and early career researchers to art therapy has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves for the academic, practice and theoretical strength it can display. Often, novel and inspiring approaches are explored by those early in their careers or just entering the profession, through a deep and reflective engagement with personal creativity and curiosity. This can have a refreshing and dynamic impact on the profession. This issue of the International Journal of Art Therapy (IJAT) presents the winning entries to the 2021 IJAT ‘Early Career Researcher Art Therapy Research Paper Prize’ and ‘New Practitioner Practice Paper Prize’. These biennial prizes are awarded by the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT) and Routledge Publishers. The aim of the prizes is to celebrate and share valuable and innovative work produced by those new to practice and research, and to encourage others to begin to research and evidence their work, ideas and creative energies. This initiative runs alongside other IJAT developments to diversify the Journal’s author base, and the IJAT board now includes a Lead Associate Editor for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, as well as Trainee, New Practitioner and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisors. New Practitioner entrants were required to be currently enrolled on an Art Therapy Masters course, or within three years of graduation, with Early Career Researcher entrants enrolled on an MA/MSc/MRes/MPhil/PhD or within three years of graduation. The prizes were judged by a panel of Lead Associate Editors (Helen Jury, Ali Coles), Associate Editors (Liz Ashby, Jamie Bird, Johanna Czamanski-Cohen, Anna Playle, Patricia St John Tager), and a previous Prize winner (Rachel Preston), chaired by the Journal Editor, Alex McDonald. Judging criteria included quality of content and writing, and significance to the field of art therapy. Winners were announced by BAAT CEO Gary Fereday at the BAAT Attachment and the Arts conference in November 2021. The 2021 prizes were the first to include an Early Career Researcher prize. Previous prize-winning and runner-up papers by New Practitioners included Joy Chong’s (2015) on looking at art psychotherapy through the lens of interpersonal neurobiology, Sian Stott’s (2018) on copying and attunement in art psychotherapy, Rachel Preston’s (2019) on the potential of art therapy for the UK armed forces, Sarah Furneaux-Blick (2019) for her paper exploring making art alongside clients, and Emily Hollingsbee (2019) for her paper on mural work within a Greek refugee camp. For 2021, entrants were required to follow IJAT’s research and practice paper templates and to submit via the Journal’s online portal, in line with the usual IJAT submission process. The judges were encouraged by the substantial number of entries and selected a winner for each category, together with two runners-up for the research category and one for the practice category. The selected papers then went through the full peer review process, and all were deemed worthy of publication and are included in this special issue.