Dr Pamela Whitaker
Overview
Pamela trained as an art therapist in Vancouver and has worked in Canada, Malaysia and Ireland. She is interested in contemporary art and creative health, art therapy in museums and galleries, environmental art therapy, the walking studio, and ecologies of care. She is a member of the Irish Association of Creative Arts Therapists and the British Association of Art Therapists and registered with the Health and Care Professions Council.
Pamela is the founding co-editor of Polyphony: Journal of the Irish Association of Creative Arts Therapists and past editor of the Canadian Art Therapy Association Journal. She is also a special issue co-editor on the topic of nature assisted art therapy for the International Journal of Art Therapy. She has served on the editorial boards of Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association and the International Journal of Art Therapy.
Pamela is a co-investigator for CHOICE, Challenging Health Outcomes/Integrating Care Environments: A Community Consortium To Tackle Health Disparities For People Living with Mental Illness funded by the Arts Humanities Research Council, which is a reseach project led by Professor Gerard Leavey, Director of the Bamford Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing aiming to improve the quality of life for people with lived experience of mental health challenges.
She is also the first Practice Based Researcher in Residence at the Void Arts Centre in Derry funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Impact Accelerator Account. The focus of her research will be The Nature of Life: Gardens as Art and The Walking Studio, both methods of engagement within civic society that focus on environmental activism and pride of place.
Pamela has written chapters for the books Materials and Media in Art Therapy, Art Therapy and Postmodernism, Found Objects in Art Therapy, Bridging the Creative Arts Therapies and Arts in Health and Ecopoiesis: A New Perspective for the Expressive and Creative Arts Therapies in the 21st Century.
She has also written editorials and articles on environmental art therapy, material and visual culture, festival art therapy and art therapy pedagogy, most notably: Full On - Festival Art Therapy, Make Yourself at Home: Home Studios as Pedagogical Practice (co-written with her colleague Dr. Chris McHugh at Ulster University), Groundswell: The Nature and Landscape of Art Therapy and Studios of Life: Outsider Art at School.
Pamela has been a conference keynote speaker for the Canadian Art Therapy Association, the Hong Kong Association of Art Therapists and the Healing through Photography conference at Belfast Exposed Gallery. She was also a visiting artist for the MA Art Therapy course at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.
Pamela is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and has achieved a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice, Ulster University. She is currently the External Examiner for the MA Art Psychotherapy programme at the University of Roehampton.