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The New Year brought new activity for WFMT Council members, with a focus on updating the website to include the priorities of our eight Commissions, new blogs from our Regional Liaisons, and a regularly updated section for students.
I encourage you to check out the rest of this website and if you run a music therapy association, you may want to share www.wfmt.info with your professional and student members. Many thanks to our Secretary Dr. Anita Swanson for her work on the website along with Executive Assistant Kumi Sato, Public Relations chair Angela Harrison, and volunteer Hsiao-Jung Yeh.
WFMT Membership
The WFMT is ineffective without a strong membership. We invite professional associations in particular to become members so that we can support you in making your voice heard. Please find more information and membership application forms at the following link. https://www.wfmt.info//wfmt-membership/membership-application/
World Music Therapy Day
March 1st was #WorldMusicTherapyDay. All WFMT Members have just received our April Monthly Buzz with detailed information about this huge global celebration. If you are involved with a professional association which is not yet a member of WFMT, do encourage them to join. There are links to our Organizational Members’ websites here.
WFMT on Social Media
Our Facebook Group goes from strength to strength and is beginning to reach and engage many more people. Since I last wrote to you in December, we have more than 500 new members bringing the total to over 5,600. We also have a Facebook page and Twitter account so do get involved
MT Publications: Music Therapy Today (MTT)
Members of the Publications Commission, led by Dr. Annie Heiderscheit are working hard to prepare the 2018 issue of MTT with a good number of submissions. I encourage you to consider submitting a paper for the 2019 issue, you will find guidelines here.
WFMT at International Conferences
Our Council members present regularly at international conferences and will continue to do so to raise awareness of the organization and its multiple activities to support the development of the music therapy profession around the world.
Since July 2017, the WFMT has participated in the following conferences and events:
- XVII Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Musicoterapia, Brazil (Oct 2017)
- American Music Therapy Association Conference, St Louis (Nov 2017)
- International Music Therapy Conference, Bahçeşehir University, Turkey (Dec 2017)
- Online Conference of Music Therapy (Feb 2018)
- Nordic Music Therapy Student Conference, Jyväskylä, Finland (Feb 2018)
- British Association for Music Therapy Conference, London (Feb 2018)
Education & Training Commission:
We invite you to visit the Education and Training Commission section of this website. In accordance with their vision statement, one of the aims of this commission is to develop educational resources for music therapy educators to further enhance education/training practices and to deepen understanding regarding cultural considerations and training programs worldwide. In order to progress towards this objective, the four Spotlight sessions from the 15th World Congress in Tsukuba, Japan 2017 are currently available on the website. We are deeply grateful to the Japanese Music Therapy Association and to all Presenters for permission to share their work.
Interviews and articles on past World Congresses of Music Therapy:
Thank you to the editorial team of Voices www.voices.no who have agreed to share the links of interviews from past World Congresses of Music Therapy. Thanks also to Dr. Barbara Wheeler who undertook and brought to our attention these valuable historical documents. These links will shortly be published on our website under a special section on the World Congress.
