Drawing on Creativity
Lesley University Lesley News
October 10, 2001

In response to the traumatic events of September 11, The Boston Institute for Arts Therapy is offering their services free of charge to the community.

"We're offering art therapy, grief counseling/consultation and artistic opportunities to create memorials in schools and community centers. Creating a memorial involves a shared response which contributes to the healing process," says Philip Speiser, ME'78, executive director of BIAT.

Philip Speiser, executive director, Boston Institute for Arts Therapy

Speiser is well qualified to direct healing activities through the arts. As an arts educator and family therapist he has been developing and implementing cross-cultural integrated arts programs for nearly twenty years.

During high school and college Speiser was very involved in theatre, where he first encountered psychodrama. "Once I saw the power of this, which was clear to me early on, I knew that using the arts as a tool for social change would be the career for me," says Speiser.

Psychodrama uses action methods, sociometry, role training and group dynamics to approximate life situations in a way that allows both insight and an opportunity to practice new life skills, according to the National Coalition of Arts Therapies Associations.

After graduating from Lesley's expressive therapies program, Speiser moved to Scandinavia and established training programs for educators and mental health workers to integrate the arts into the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish adult educational and mental health systems.

Music session at The Big Draw Creative Arts Camp

Speiser returned to the U.S. in 1990 and founded Arts Across Cultures, a non-profit organization offering consultation, development and implementation of arts-based educational and therapeutic programs in addition to conflict resolution and violence prevention projects. He received his Ph.D. from Union Institute in psychology and the arts. Speiser assumed the directorship of BIAT last year.

BIAT is a community-based human service agency that provides mental health care through the power of creative expression in art, music, drama and dance to 46 communities in Eastern Massachusetts.

A popular BIAT program is The Big Draw Creative Arts Camp for girls which provides an immersion in the creative arts. Speiser emphasizes that The Big Draw is not a therapeutic camp, but an opportunity for girls ages 6 to 12 to build self-esteem and arm themselves with a new appreciation of what it means to express themselves as young women.

Many of the girls who attend the camp live in extreme poverty, some live in shelters and the rest come from low to moderate income families. Most of the tuition is subsidized but parents pay what they can.

"Many graduates of Lesley's expressive therapies programs are involved with BIAT and The Big Draw," says Speiser. "Lesley is a leader in training arts therapists who then come to work for us."

"The arts draw out the best in us. They have always kept me in touch with my own humanity and allow me the gift of connecting and touching others as well," says Speiser. "In these trying times, we all need to keep finding connecting points to our collective good."