The role of creative art in community education : art education and art therapy

The thesis looks firstly at creativity and the creativeprocess, approaching the subject from a whole range of different viewpoints, such as the psychological, philosophical, biographical and anthropological angles. Following from this there is an exploration of the ways in which creativity way be awakened and unfolded. Special attention is given to the conditions and situations that are likely to encourage creative development and to the blocks and difficulties that inhibit its expression.Particular reference is made, on the one hand, to art education and to the art, leisure, and teaching student, and on the other hand, to art therapy and the psychiatric patient. The themes of the individual and the community are explored in a complementary way in the final two chapters. The thesis emphasizes the viewpoint of the student and the patient, but since these people do not exist in a vacuum, this involves looking also at the teacher, the therapist and society. With reference to the psychiatric field, other specific questions arise, for example: How may creative opportunities assist the healing process? What are the reciprocal influences of artand mental illness? Throughout the thesis the term 'art' is used in the visual sense, but references are made to creativity in other fields where parallel conclusions apply. The emphasis has been placed on the adult, but the subject of 'Creativity and the Teaching Student' involves some references to child art and 'Creativity and the Community' involves all ages

The manuscript poetry of Thomas St Nicholas and the writing of ‘scripturalism’ in seventeenth-century England

This thesis examines the manuscript poems of Thomas St Nicholas (bap. 1602, d. 1668). His poetry is examined through the writing of ‘scripturalism’ in seventeenth-century England. I argue that ‘scripturalism’ was a literary trend in print and manuscript, prose and verse that shared the same scriptures to convey mutual religious, social and political values. St Nicholas’ poetry engages with, as it exemplifies, this paradigm of writing. Chapter One investigates St Nicholas’ Civil War prison verse epistle alongside Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563) and prison narratives of the seventeenth century. His poem was part of a literary culture of prison writing that used shared scenes of suffering to connect present persecutions via a Protestant past. Chapter Two explores St Nicholas’ hymn of recovery from sickness. His account of illness shares much with scriptural acts and attitudes widely performed and recorded in the early modern sick-chamber. Chapter Three looks at the psalm paraphrases used in his prison verse. It shows St Nicholas invoking certain psalms that were widely used by other parliamentarian preachers and poets to justify the war as just and righteous. Chapter Four examines St Nicholas’ battle hymn composed during the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654). I demonstrate his contribution to a recognised form of parliamentarian victory praise which used battle hymns to trumpet military victories using key scriptural texts and images. Chapter Five explores St Nicholas’ poem on the Great Fire of London (1666). By examining other urban fire narratives, a shared Biblicism emerges, whereby pulpiteers and balladeers were more united than divided when moralising these horrific events. This thesis argues that St Nicholas’ poetry is evidence of a pervasive literary culture that used the Bible cross-denominationally, and occasionally cross-politically. Scripture provided a common reference for writers like him to describe both everyday and extraordinary occurrences