The relationship between figure and background: Towards a new theory of a social prism for analyzing the mechanisms of art in therapy

‘Art helps take down barriers, in that the use of the imagination is the ability to put oneself in another’s place...in this sense, art is moral, because empathy is the ultimate morality’ (Dewey, 1934. p.10).Social theories are different from the psychological dynamic and humanistic theories much used in art therapy: Compared to psychological theories that assume that the problem is within the individual psyche, social theories assume that the problem is situated within the social systems that surround the individual, such as the ecological circles of family, community and state, or global systems of power. On a broader social level, then marginalized roles or positions create a lack of physical, symbolic, social, or other types of resources for solving problems (Minuchen, 1975; Gladding, 2002). The solution is to shift the roles within the system and to re-distribute resources. Marginalization stems from social and economic policies that create systematic discrimination and deprivation based on race, ethnicity, religion, or gender; and exacerbated by processes of immigration, war, and political instability, as well as general social disorganization and conflicting values within the social system (Foucault, 2000). The theory of empowerment assumes that all relationships are power infused, and that the ecological layers that comprise the socio-cultural context of the client’s reality can include different types of disempowerment and marginalization such as a racial, gendered, or ethnic lack of power (Patterson et al, 2009; Piercy et al, 1996)

Drawing on the Arts to Enhance Salutogenic Coping With Health-Related Stress and Loss

The connection between art therapy and specific theories of positive psychology such as Antonovsky’s theory of salutogenic sense of coherence (SOC) has been less articulated in the literature. This paper draws a methodological connection between art therapy and SOC, that is, meaning, manageability and comprehensibility, as the components of coping. This theoretical and methodological connection is then explored with a group of participants dealing with the health-stress of cancer.Method: We conducted a large-scale, qualitative study that included fifty transcribed hours of thematically analyzed arts processes and one hundred art works, used to explore salutogenic theory within a support group for recovering oncological patients.Results: The results point to the arts as including mechanisms that enhance meaning, manageability, and comprehensibility in an embodied and synergetic way. The art makes it possible both to separate and to ‘fill’ these three components, while on the other hand, integrating them into a cyclical element. We outline theoretical and methodological implications of understanding art therapy as a methodology to enact and concretize positive psychology theories, as well as presenting a protocol for using arts to enhance salutogenic coping in the context of health-related stress

Putting you in the picture: using visual imagery in social work supervision

The literature on social work supervision has consistently documented the impact of the work on the health and wellbeing of individual practitioners and the tensions they experience when mediating organisational demands with the needs of service users. Simultaneously, the quality and content of social work supervision has become increasingly vulnerable to both local and global systemic issues impacting on the profession. It is timely to explore effective short term, self-regulatory methods of support based on short/simple training for professionals. These can be used as a means of complementing and enriching their current supervision experiences and practice. We describe such a method involving an arts-based intervention in which five groups of social work professionals in England (n=30) were invited to explore guided imagery as a tool for reflecting on a challenge or dilemma arising in their everyday practice. Evaluation data was captured from the participants’ pre-workshop questionnaire; visual analyses of the images generated and the social workers narratives and post-workshop evaluation. We discuss the potential application of using visual imagery as a tool to bridge gaps in supervision practice and as a simple pedagogic tool for promoting contemplative processes of learning. Visual imagery can be used to strengthen social workers integration of different demands with their emotional supports and coping strategies

Creating an empirically-based model of social arts as a public health resource: Training, typology, and impact

Mounting empirical evidence underscores the health benefits of the arts, as recently reported in a scoping review by the World Health Organization. The creative arts in particular are acknowledged to be a public health resource that can be beneficial for well-being and health. Within this broad context, and as a subfield of participatory arts, the term social arts (SA) specifically refers to an art made by socially engaged professionals (e.g., artists, creative arts therapists, social workers, etc.) with non-professionals who determine together the content and the final art product (in theater, visual arts, music, literature, etc.) with the aim to produce meaningful social changes. SA can enhance individual, community, and public health in times of sociopolitical instability and is an active field in Israel. However, SA is still an under-investigated field of study worldwide that is hard to characterize, typify, or evaluate. This paper presents a research protocol designed to examine a tripartite empirically-based model of SA that will cover a wide range of SA training programs, implementations, and impacts. The findings will help refine the definition of SA and inform practitioners, trainers, and researchers, as well as funding bodies and policymakers, on the content and impact of SA projects in Israel and beyond

Using art to illuminate social workers' stress

Summary: This article aims to capture the self-defined holistic interaction between stressors, stress reactions and coping for social workers’ stress. We utilised an arts-based intervention in the form of a single drawing with 80 social workers, who were actively guided to explore their own stressors, stress reactions and coping. Findings: Our findings suggest that whilst social workers define their stressors as being related to a lack of social work professional and managerial support (a macro problem), they experience this stress as lack of personal efficacy and self-worth and expect to cope by drawing on their inner strengths rather than by challenging the ‘system’ (micro solutions). Thus, they tend not to utilise available systemic ideas and theories in social work to address their own problems. Application:These findings offer a way of exploring stress and coping as an interactive whole that helps to understand both systemic stressors and the gaps in social workers’ coping methods. It also explores the relationship between stressors, stress reactions and coping through the personal drawings and narratives of participating social workers. The findings are relevant for supervisors, and managers helping social workers to manage stress, and offer an example of how visual methods might be used as a pedagogic tool in social work education and practice

Researching Creations: Applying Arts-Based Research to Bedouin Women's Drawings Ephrat Huss and Julie Cwikel

In this article, the author examines the combination of arts-based research and art therapy within Bedouin women's empowerment groups. The art fulfills a double role within the group of both helping to illuminate the women's self-defined concerns and goals, and simultaneously enriching and moving these goals forward. This creates a research tool that adheres to the feminist principles of finding new ways to learn from lower income women from a different culture, together with creating a research context that is of direct potential benefit and enrichment for the women. The author, through examples of the use of art within lower income Bedouin women's groups, examines the theoretical connection between arts-based research and art therapy, two areas that often overlap but whose connection has not been addressed theoretically

The Use of Online CB-ART Interventions in the Context of COVID-19: Enhancing Salutogenic Coping

Community crises require the provision of short-term reflective intervention methods to help service users identify stressors, and access and intensify their adaptive coping. Here, we demonstrate the use of a single-session online cognitive behavioral- and art-based (CB-ART) intervention within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this method, the individual draws three images: his/her COVID-19-related stress, his/her perceived resources, and an integration of stress and resources. This method provided a reflective space in which individuals could identify their experienced stressors, acknowledge their coping resources, and integrate these two elements within the context of the current pandemic. In this article, we use illustrative examples from a study implemented during the first national lockdown in Israel and present a tool that can be easily implemented by mental-health professionals in ongoing community crises. The aims of this intervention were to co-create knowledge with service users, access their self-defined needs and strengths, and enhance their coping by enabling them to view stress and coping as part of the salutogenic continuum