Arts in Health, also known as Arts for Health, is an umbrella term used to describe the domain of using the arts to enhance our (mental) health and well-being. It involves a heterogeneous range of professionals who use the arts in various ways, with different goals and outcomes. The practices of these professionals can be placed on a continuum based on the variety of goals and outcomes, ranging from promoting social connection or well-being to treating (mental) health conditions. Recent discussions in the Netherlands have raised questions about the position of creative arts therapists on this continuum. This opinion paper addresses this issue by providing a brief overview of the development of the profession of creative arts therapists, the working areas of creative arts therapists and the growing evidence base of creative arts therapeutic interventions. The practices of creative arts therapists are positioned on the continuum, where the emphasis on and accountability for the clients’ (mental) health increases and evidence-informed use of the arts within a more clearly delineated and legally safeguarded professional framework are present. Knowing where the practices of creative arts therapists are placed can assist in identifying when to choose creative arts therapists, other professionals combining arts and healthcare, or a combination of professionals.
Empirical studies in the creative arts therapies (CATs; i.e., art therapy, dance/movement therapy, drama therapy, music therapy, psychodrama, and poetry/bibliotherapy) have grown rapidly in the last 10 years, documenting their positive impact on a wide range of psychological and physiological outcomes (e.g., stress, trauma, depression, anxiety, and pain). However, it remains unclear how and why the CATs have positive effects, and which therapeutic factors account for these changes. Research that specifically focuses on the therapeutic factors and/or mechanisms of change in CATs is only beginning to emerge. To gain more insight into how and why the CATs influence outcomes, we conducted a scoping review (Nstudies = 67) to pinpoint therapeutic factors specific to each CATs discipline, joint factors of CATs, and more generic common factors across all psychotherapy approaches. This review therefore provides an overview of empirical CATs studies dealing with therapeutic factors and/or mechanisms of change, and a detailed analysis of these therapeutic factors which are grouped into domains. A framework of 19 domains of CATs therapeutic factors is proposed, of which the three domains are composed solely of factors unique to the CATs: “embodiment,” “concretization,” and “symbolism and metaphors.” The terminology used in change process research is clarified, and the implications for future research, clinical practice, and CATs education are discussed.
When conducting research in and for the creative industries, there are a wealth of different possible research approaches that can be taken - reflecting the diverse nature of the disciplines (design, arts and crafts, advertising, architecture, fashion, film, music, TV, radio performing arts, publishing and interactive software) and academic contexts (art schools, business schools and universities) involved. The result is that there are variations in the emphasis and approach taken to how students are taught to link theory with practice, and how they view and engage with the concept ʻresearchʼ. The need for understanding and awareness of a range of approaches is critical for anyone learning about and working within design, business and the creative industries today.
The main aim of the project is to provide new research in the arts by focusing on the concept of the inter-sensorial as an essential text for the creation of art and culture. It is designed to foreground the role of the sensorium as an underpinning source for many aspects of thought and cultural heritage. This project will blend visual arts with applied arts and traditional local traditions, revealing new light on the artistic facets and customs which are usually overlooked.The extended residencies will promote transnational mobility for emerging artists, facilitating international relationships between different artistic and cultural contexts within the EU. This will promote transnational interconnectivity between artists and cultures, creating a resourceful intercultural fertilisation, endorsing cultural diversity, social inclusion and most of all, further research on the intercultural facets.Through the various side-activities to take place during the mobilities of the artists, the project aims to strengthen and develop diverse audiences by producing the necessary elements for a dialogue, illustrating interpretations of rich layers of tangible and intangible heritage and legacies of European countries related to the tradition of sensorial experiences and how they evolved around traditional customs. Furthermore, it also aims to rethink and project new and innovative ways for documenting, preserving and communicating data to different audiences.
GAMEHEARTS will seek to maximise the value of the European videogame industry ecosystems (hereafter, EVGIE) within a wider social context of the creative and cultural industries (hereafter, CCI). This will consider the importance of the EVGIE in contributing to economic growth, job creation, physical and mental wellbeing, and social and cultural cohesion, by particularly focusing on, how a stronger and closer working relationship between more the traditional and emergent cultural sectors, can work better to create more inclusive and socially responsible cultural experiences. The consortium will offer policy recommendations and roadmaps setting out how the EVGIE can and should develop, and where it could act as a driver for sustained innovation and economic growth. It will utilise an evidence-based approach that focuses not just on videogame development, but rather adopts a holistic ecosystem approach, utilising both established and more innovative methodologies, to consider the competitiveness and development of the EVGIE, and how videogame know-how and technologies could drive innovation in the wider CCI. In doing so, GAMEHEARTS will develop ‘ludic experiences’, to explore possibilities of more inclusive, engaging, and empowering cultural experiences. Working across seven work packages the universities of Salford (UK), Tampere (Finland), Vienna (Austria), Breda University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), and Wroclaw University of Economics and Business (Poland) will work in parentship with Ubisoft (France) and other major videogame partners and associations (including the ISFE & EGDF) to explore current and future trends in the EVGIE.
Society continues to place an exaggerated emphasis on women's skins, judging the value of lives lived within, by the colour and condition of these surfaces. This artistic research will explore how the skin of a painting might unpack this site of judgement, highlight its objectification, and offer women alternative visualizations of their own sense of embodiment. This speculative renovation of traditional concepts of portrayal will explore how painting, as an aesthetic body whose material skin is both its surface and its inner content (its representations) can help us imagine our portrayal in a different way, focusing, not on what we look like to others, but on how we sense, touch, and experience. How might we visualise skin from its ghostly inner side? This feminist enquiry will unfold alongside archival research on The Ten Largest (1906-07), a painting series by Swedish Modernist Hilma af Klint. Initial findings suggest the artist was mapping traditional clothing designs into a spectral, painterly idea of a body in time. Fundamental methods research, and access to newly available Af Klint archives, will expand upon these roots in maps and women’s craft practices and explore them as political acts, linked to Swedish Life Reform, and knowingly sidestepping a non-inclusive art history. Blending archival study with a contemporary practice informed by eco-feminism is an approach to artistic research that re-vivifies an historical paradigm that seems remote today, but which may offer a new understanding of the past that allows us to also re-think our present. This mutuality, and Af Klint’s rhizomatic approach to image-making, will therefore also inform the pedagogical development of a Methods Research programme, as part of this post-doc. This will extend across MA and PhD study, and be further enriched by pedagogy research at Cal-Arts, Los Angeles, and Konstfack, Stockholm.
