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How
the Boston Institute for Arts Therapy Came to Be
In 1981, Ricky Stern was a newly-degreed music therapist. She had
a vision of bringing what she believed were effective healing arts
therapies to audiences who couldn't afford it: shelters, inner-city
housing projects, schools and day-care centers, day-treatment programs
for drug users, prevention programs for at-risk children and teens.
With a small loan from
her parents, she began writing grant proposals, seeking small,
targeted grants from Massachusetts foundations and succeeded in
founding the Institute.
The center, then called the Center for Creative Arts Therapies
(CCAT), began collaborating with schools, after school centers,
hospitals and shelters throughout Boston and eastern MA. The goals were to gain exposure
for the effectiveness of creative arts therapies, to introduce these services in numerous locations and to get various
centers to contract for CCAT's services.
As
more centers learned about creative arts therapy and its effectiveness
with the people they served, demand for CCAT's services grew.
The organization was renamed to Boston Institute for Arts Therapy
in 1994.
In July 2006
the Institute merged with Whittier Street Health Center
and created the new Arts Therapy Department at Whittier.
In an effort to continue investing in our future, we
will continue to deliver on the mission and goals that
we have been dedicated to since our founding in 1982.
Today there are over 10 art, music, dance, drama and integrative
expressive arts therapists and educators on staff at Whittier
providing invaluable arts services to over 2,000 adults, children
and families at over 30 various locations throughout Eastern
Massachusetts.
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