Arts, Creativity and Mental Wellbeing : Policy Development response from Dr Carla van Laar

Arts, creativity and wellbeing is an inter-sectorial field. Artists, Creative Arts Therapists and other Allied Health Professionals have distinctive yet overlapping expertise and skills to bring. Arts and health programs and projects can benefit from having Artists, Creative Arts Therapists and other Allied Health Professionals collaborate to create holistic responses that are artistically, relationally and ethically robust. In addition, inter-sectorial collaboration can enable greater understanding and respect for the expertise and skill sets that each practitioner brings as an important part of the bigger picture.

An example of such inter-sectorial collaboration can be seen in the diverse practitioners who attended the 2021 and 2022 Creative Mental Health Forums in Boon Wurrung Country, South East Gippsland (see the 12 minute documentary film here: https://vimeo.com/578978435). The programming has brought together Traditional Owners, First Nations Healing Practitioners, Creative Arts Therapists working with visual arts, dance/movement, drama and music, as well as Arts Practitioners including Actors, Visual Artists, Musicians and Dancers and allied health professionals including Psychologists, Counsellors, Nurses and Social Workers (see the 2022 program here: https://carlavanlaar.com/program-2022-creative-mental-health-forum-and-self-care-retreat/).

The structure of the Creative Mental Health Forum enables knowledge sharing and relationship building opportunities for attendees that support the possibilities of new collaborations between diverse inter-sectorial practitioners. Sharing time and working together enables the dissolution of perceived differences and territorialism in the landscape of Arts and Wellbeing, whilst building respect for others’ distinct skills and expertise.

For example, perceptions that Creative Arts Therapists can only work in clinical settings with individuals, or that Creative Arts Therapy focuses on trying to get people to open up about problems, can be attitudes that prevent Artists from seeking collaboration with Creative Arts Therapists.

My Doctoral research explicated implications for the implementation and practice of Creative Arts Therapy that are relevant and significant to the development of Australia’s Arts, Creativity and Wellbeing Policies (see my Implications Chapter here: https://carlavanlaar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SeeingHerStories-Chapter10.pdf). I considered how art therapy practice can be opened up in ways beyond clinical and studio based models, and the possibilities of being an artist / art therapist.

My Doctoral study showed how engaging in the arts can be life enhancing in a diversity of ways that could be described as therapeutic, without being activities that might traditionally be understood as therapy. This provides a welcome relief from any polarised theoretical discussions regarding art versus therapy. This perspective opens up possibilities for what Art Therapy can be. Dominant stories of therapeutic practice often emphasise assessments, interventions, and measurable changes such as decreases in distress, pain or unwanted behaviours. An expanded view of Art Therapy emphasises lived experiencing, quality of life, health, well-being, enablement, authorship, participation, resilience, interests, values, skills development, community strengthening, collaboration and engagement. Art is seen as a valuable way of knowing and knowledge production. Listening carefully to descriptions from participants, coinquirers, companions and the people we work with, can provide us with unexpected, unique and valuable ways to understand and describe how art based and art informed practices can be life enhancing. Rather than layering borrowed theories over art based practices, we can use art making and artefacts as ways of understanding our experiences. Part of our roles as Therapeutic Arts Practitioners becomes bringing art out of clinics, studios and galleries, into lives and into the world. The ways in which we can do this are as diverse as the contexts we work in.

We can start by considering places where Art Therapists already work, such as hospitals, schools, prisons, rehabilitation centres, aged care settings, disability services and private practices. How can we bring more encounters with art into these places?

As well as imagining how we might bring more art encounters into the spaces we already work in, I have started imagining bringing our art making practices out of institutions where therapy is expected to occur, into unconventional places, and the ripple effects that this might have. The kinds of activities I employ as an artist in residence are an example of expanding the role of an art therapist beyond the space of therapy, out of galleries, and into the world (see my article “The Art of Recovery: One day at a time: https://carlavanlaar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Scan-25-Jun-2019-at-3.31-pm.pdf).

An expanded view of art therapy opens up the possibilities for artist / art therapists to work as artists in residence in all sorts of unconventional settings including, for example, corporate offices, police stations or building sites. In practising art making with others in unconventional settings, what becomes important as a skilled therapeutic arts facilitator is not merely the design of the activity itself, but how we practise; intersubjectively, artistically, with refined sensibilities about the qualitative aspects of what we do.

Creative Arts Therapists can bring particular skill sets to interdisciplinary teams planning and implementing collaborative arts and health initiatives.