The line that categorises art as an aesthetic product (with potential therapeutic side-effects) and art as a direct therapeutic medium seems to be thinner when a mainstream audience considers the artistic activity of marginalised populations.

That art is therapeutic has been known on some level since humanity's early explorations in the different forms of expression. Indeed, catharsis became Aristotle's tool for justifying dramatic practice within ancient Greek aesthetic theory. But with the exponential growth of cultural activity over the millennia and with the fine tuning of definitions and forms of therapeutic activity over the much more recent centuries, the arts therapies have come to refer to specific practice within contexts very different to artistic ones.

The intention of practice remains fundamental in the differentiation. And this affects society in two principal ways: the first being that not every artist can claim to be a therapist. Indeed, such a claim is monitored very closely by the health authorities in countries where rigorous training is available for arts therapists such as in the UK (reference to qualified arts therapists working in Malta can be found on the website of the Creative Arts Therapies Society www.catsmalta.org). Secondly, the aesthetic value of artistic product does not matter within a therapeutic context, but does significantly where art is presented for public exhibition. People hold the potential to participate in both spheres but as a public we seem not to be able to allow for some marginalised groups of people to participate in aesthetic art but only in therapeutically creative activity.

This is what happened when, a few weeks ago, an article which I wrote with reference to the Opening Doors project, a theatre company of actors with learning disabilities supported by St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, was published seemingly appearing as part of a feature, written and submitted independently by Jo Caruana, on dramatherapy (The Times, Weekender, September 19).

With this editorial decision to place the two articles on the same page, the image which the Opening Doors project has been working on for two years was disrupted significantly. It again raised the question as to why it is that when people with a disability engage in creative activity it is seemingly perceived as a means for personal development and not as a way of sharing creative expression with society at large. This is the question which indeed led me to working in this field as a creative practitioner.

To use a banal example for comparison, when I watch a musical production called Porn, I do not ask how the actors' participation in such a production enhanced their sexual activity outside of the theatrical realm. For all intents and purposes, it might have had an effect, and this would then be a therapeutic side-effect of the experience for the actor. But, it is not the reason for which I, as a paying member of the audience, watch the performance. However, it seems that, often, this is the perspective taken when thinking of a creative product performed by an artist who has a disability.

Needless to say, the aesthetic criteria by which we judge a performance differ significantly once we become public spectators of a performance, a judgement which is totally absent from creative work framed within a therapeutic context. But in denying ourselves the right to evaluate a creative piece presented publicly according to aesthetic principles, mightn't we be also denying the creators of that piece the right to their full artistic potential and the right to be seen as artists offering a creative expression to a public?

And this leads me to my final question where I wonder whether this obstacle regarding a creative work produced by an artist with a disability as a work of art is conditioned by society's delay in acknowledging persons who have a disability as potential contributors to society and, therefore, also to art.

Thus, in locating a project like the Opening Doors project within the mainstream artistic space that is St James Cavalier, where artistic standards are demanded and met, the objective includes creating a positive image of disability and such projects hold up an image of the potential and right of persons with a disability for inclusion within mainstream society at large.