Art in Action: Expressive Arts Therapy and Social Change(Arts Therapies)

About the Book

The field of expressive arts is closely tied to the work of therapeutic change. As well as being beneficial for the individual or small group, expressive arts therapy has the potential for a much wider impact, to inspire social action and bring about social change.

The book's contributors explore the transformative power of the arts therapies in areas stricken by conflict, political unrest, poverty or natural disaster and discuss how and why expressive arts works. They look at the ways it can be used to engage community consciousness and improve social conditions whilst taking into account the issues that arise within different contexts and populations. Leading expressive arts therapy practitioners give inspiring accounts of their work, from using poetry as a tool in trauma intervention with Iraqi survivors of war and torture, to setting up storytelling workshops to aid the integration of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel.

Offering visionary perspectives on the role of the arts in inspiring change at the community or social level, this is essential reading for students and practitioners of creative and expressive arts therapies, as well as psychotherapists, counsellors, artists and others working to effect social change.

Table of Contents:
Introduction. Part I: Principles. Poiesis and the Aesthetics of Social Change, Stephen K. Levine. Expressive Arts and Social Change: Have We Gone Beyond Therapy?, Ellen G. Levine. The Capacity of Expressive Arts to Facilitate Change: A Human Imperative, Karen Estrella. Communal Art Making and Conflict Management: The Art Experience as a Resource for a Meditation-focused Discourse, Paolo Knill. Dark Aspects of Creation: The Alchemy of Imagination, Shaun McNiff. Part II: Issues. Trauma and Performance: Constructing Meaning After Tragedy - The Theater of Witness, Jack Saul. A Social-critical Reading of Indigenous Women's Art: The Use of Visual Data to 'Show', Rather than 'Tell', of the Intersection of Different Layers of Oppression, Ephrat Huss. Inside and Outside: The Collision Between Internal and External Worlds in Contexts of Political Violence and Social Change, Debra Kalmanowitz and Bobby Lloyd. Toward a New Understanding of the Effectiveness of the Arts Therapies in the Treatment of PTSD: A Poetic, Neuropsychological Approach, Mooli Lahad. A Wu Wei of Social Change: Some Thoughts on Relational Aesthetics Under Unlikely Circumstances, Sabine Silberberg. Listening to the Voice of Victims: The Healing Power of Poetry in Contexts of Torture and War, Shanee Stepakoff. Part III: Projects. The Choreography of Absence: (In)habiting the Imagination After War in Sierra Leone, Carrie MacLeod. Creating Space for Change: The Use of Expressive Arts with Vulnerable Children and Women Prisoners in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gloria Simoneaux. Beauty in the Rough Places: Expressive Arts Responses to Critical Incidents in Darfur, Karen Abbs. The Child in the Street: Expressive Arts in Bolivia, Sally Atkins. Owning the Unknown: The Metamorphosis of The Children's Expressive Arts Project at Bard College, Susanna Armbruster. A Voice in the Scene of Chaos:  Expressive Arts and Social Practice within the Peruvian Context, TAE Peru (Judith Alalu, Jose Miguel Calderon, Ximena Maurial, Monica Prado, Pilar Souza, Martin Zavala). Rising From the Depths: Lesley University's Experience in Using the Expressive Arts as a Tool to Integrate Ethiopian Jewish Immigrants in Nes Ziona, Israel, Vivien Markow-Speiser and Samuel Schwartz.

About the Author :
Stephen K. Levine is Professor Emeritus of Social Science at York University in Toronto, Canada, Vice-Provost and Dean of the Doctoral Program in Expressive Arts Therapy: Education, Consulting and Social Change at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, and Co-Director of ISIS Canada. Shaun McNiff PhD, ATR is the Provost and Dean of Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts. An internationally-renowned figure in the creative arts therapies, he has written many critically-acclaimed books including Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination,Educating the Creative Arts Therapist and Depth Psychology of Art. Dr McNiff has been honoured on many occasions for his pioneering contributions to the creative arts therapy field, and he is the 1997 recipient of the America Art Therapy Association's Honorary Life Member Award.

Review :
It is difficult to describe this book in a few words - please read it and be inspired! Reading the collected essays found in this book is like being given a window into not only the diversity of what expressive arts therapy and its uses in the public sphere are, but beyond that, what expressive arts looks like and feels like from the perspective of those expressive art practitioners who utilize the tools of the arts within a framework of social healing and change... This book is an opportunity to see clearly the connection between expressive arts and social change: the natural phenomenon that occurs when you allow those you work with to be held in a space where they can express their most fundamental experiences. Calling all practitioners, therapists, educators and community members! The trumpets have sounded; calling up all available and able expressive and creative arts therapists for the charge of social action. Art in Action: Expressive Arts Therapy and Social Change is not the first book to champion social issues; however, its fourteen chapters may be the broadest and yet most focused work addressing the use of art for social and political change... The most powerful contribution of Art in Action is the work itself, the making of change, and the chapters that demonstrate and address the hardships and societal issues where arts-based practitioners have created change... These published testaments to community change through art are worthy of celebration and congratulations. Art in Action is a well written book providing both theoretical and practical considerations and an abundance of rich and detailed accounts of expressive art projects within a wide range of communities. It was both interesting and inspiring. This book is highly recommended to any professionals working in a mental health capacity and those working with communitites in order to affect social change.