Wellness and Empowerment
Alternative Medicine: The Use of Art for Wellness and Empowerment
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joshua Kin-Man Nan
This proposed project endeavors to transfer knowledge and techniques of art therapy (Use of Art, UoA) for helping professionals from Hong Kong (HK) and Kuala Lumpur (KL), in enhancing psychosocial rehabilitation for their service users. The project provides UoA training to trainees (e.g. social workers, nurses, psychologists, art educators), for facilitating the use of visual art to enhance wellbeing of their service users, i.e. the UoA participants. The trainees will implement 4 UoA activities in group setting that target the challenges of the UoA participants. Artworks created and selected by the UoA participants will be displayed in art exhibits to give voice to these individuals. The training team comprises artists, art psychotherapists, university educators, and researchers. Qualitative research methods with art-based inquiry are adopted. Outcome measures are applied respectively to the project trainees, to measure change in professional efficacy before/after UoA training, and the UoA participants, to measure change in self-efficacy, resilience, and positive/negative emotion before/after UoA activities. Focus groups will be conducted to all project participants at the completion of all UoA activities. Quantitative data, and artworks will be analyzed and compared across HK and KL. This project advocates art as an alternative, supplementary medicine. It emphasizes artistic expression, empowerment, and social stigma elimination. The training for multidisciplinary helping professionals promotes sustainable development of UoA in various professions. The research components provide facts to the therapeutic use of art and help build the theoretical underpinnings of art therapy for clinical treatment.
The Big Anxiety Festival of Arts, Science, and People: Creating a Framework for Transdisciplinary Research and Engagement in Mental Health
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jill Bennett
The Big Anxiety, TBA, is a research-driven, biennial festival that brings together artists, scientists, and communities to question and re-imagine the state of mental health in the 21st century. TBA challenges the hierarchies and limitations of the bio-medical model of mental health, developing bottom-up research to advance understanding of lived experience; experimental methods of engagement; and forums for addressing mental health and human distress beyond the health and medical sphere. This paper will address the theoretical grounding, underpinning research, institutional framework, collaborative methods/processes and outcomes/impact to-date of The Big Anxiety. Focusing on the inaugural 2017 festival which was staged across Greater Sydney (comprising 75 events, 16 new art commissions, 140,000 visitors), it will highlight transdisciplinary collaborations and engagement strategies – and the role of the arts in developing radical approaches to care. Projects discussed will include multimedia immersive environments and interventions relating to suicide prevention and institutional abuse, as well as to the politics of care and social determinants of mental health.
Multi-Disciplinary Arts Programs for Healing and Personal Empowerment: Arts Based Programming in Community for Self-esteem and Well-being
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brooke Hughes
The arts offer a powerful path for emotional healing from illness, isolation, crisis, or mental turbulence. The creative process invites an avenue of self-expression that can generate a cathartic release, as well as self-discovery. Additionally, art-making has also been shown to increase self-reported feelings of self-efficacy, self-esteem and well-being, which can be healing in the context of feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness that emerge as a result of a serious illness or life crisis (Kaimal & Ray, 2017; Karwowski & Kaufman, 2017). This paper will explore the psychological and neuroscientific impact of multi-disciplinary creative arts in community, especially its capacity to provide supportive relationships and hope, as well as yield specific changes in the brain, including the release of neurochemicals that can reduce anxiety, depression, pain, and create balance in the body through the relaxation response (homeostasis), which can increase resiliency (King, 2018). Specifically, this paper will explore how programs conducted by a California-based nonprofit organization The Art of Elysium uses multi-disciplinary creative arts, in over 28 major hospitals, foundations and special education centers, to reduce negative affect, providing increased subjective reports of well-being. This organization has partnered with creative artists in four disciplines: Fashion and Design, Film and Theatre, Music and Movement and Visual Arts to help medically fragile children, the homeless, elders, and those with mental illness and self-esteem needs. The Art of Elysium uses the arts as a catalyst for social change and an avenue for personal empowerment.
Theatre for Trauma: A Devised Theatre Performance Dealing with Personal Trauma
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Margot Marie Wood
When dealing with personally traumatized participants, and devising theatre dealing with these traumatic events, the emotions involved are real and often overwhelming for participants. The emotional recall might trigger a reliving of the original traumatic event and its accompanying emotions. This study documents the use of embodied acting techniques and action-based direction to devise a performance script and performance piece dealing with personal trauma. Action-based instruction, that is instruction focusing on physical states of being and physical action, can provide a framework within which emotionally charged issues can be revisited, explored and resolved.
