Professional Documents
Culture Documents
the results to the wider population. This reviews intent is to look at what has already been done
in the field followed by recommendations for going forward as a result.
Methods
Using search terms creative expressions, art, stakeholders, and trauma through Jstor and
PubMed. Only included articles from US, UK, and Canada are because of availability. This
literature review will highlight the structured classroom, native populations, and trauma victims.
Review of Multiple Populations
School Based
There is already a large amount of research that has been done about how arts education
can be utilized. This is the result of art already being a requirement of school curriculum. But as
it has been said before much of what is being taught is disconnected from the participants
experiences. These already existing art programs are based on teaching students new ways of
creating art and thinking outside the box so to speak. Rarely do these programs actually address
emotional health and how to deal with anxiety. For families for whom access to these services
is difficult and/or embarrassing, schools can be a more financially and geographically accessible
service site as well as a non-stigmatizing gateway to such support (Pumariega, Rogers, &
Rothe, 2005). With many art programs shuttering as a result of them being seen as costly and
non-essential programming, public health practitioners have gone into schools to show the
effects of school based interventions that are focused in the arts.
Liana Lowenstein compiled a large document encompassing a variety of intervention
related activities used by multiple public health practitioners as part of an arts based intervention
(2008). Many of these interventions seem like a usual class activity, but behind it that includes
facilitation time, discussion of the activity, and the activity actually fueling more positive
interaction than what may occur in therapy. For example, M.E. Leroys intervention involved
covertly creating a positive therapeutic environment so that they can isolate particular events that
may pre-occupy the clients in order to address any feelings of guilt and responsibility. The
children use materials to create a time machine, allowing them to escape through the physical
creation of art and the imaginary possibility of escaping to another time. It allows children to
address ideas of going back and addressing trauma. (Leroy 2008).
Trauma
Sometimes community is created through the school system, while sometimes they are
created through shared experience(s). Trauma survivors are usually greeted with feelings of
isolation, anxiety, etc.; as a result Southeast Missouri University Department of Nursing was
trying to find a way to show how nurses could be used in a creative way to have positive impact
on the well-being of trauma survivors. They decided to create a seven week course for women
who have experienced trauma to have a group space to create art and have the forum to discuss
their trauma, and/or have respite to focus their minds on something other than trauma. The
nurses discovered a dramatic rise in self-worth, esteem, and lower anxiety/depression. It was
concluded that creative group therapeutic practices were a cost effective, management tool for
trauma survivors outside of traditional therapy environments (Garner 2015).
This study shows that the physical creation of art for yourself and others is a way to take
control of your surroundings. Flow is the psychological concept that by absorbing oneself in an
activity allows for the participant to escape (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). They used the
will give the public health practitioners time to train and facilitate less arts based components of
the intervention (Casserta & Cuccia 2001).
The only interventions that involved artists were for Native populations. While the public
health practitioners moved on to other interventions, artists were the ones able to stay after the
interventions conclusion. They were sustainable not only because they built upon the history of
their culture, but also because the facilitators created a community connection to the participants
(Bequette 2009). They built upon the already existing cultural capital, something that was not
feasible on the school environment and for trauma victims for obvious reasons. This does not
mean that the interventionists cannot pull from the wealth of cultural competence that already
exists in the education and counseling fields (Cheng 2006). Public health needs creative
expression based programming for innovative programming is needed to further the field.
Innovation is needed to more effectively address issues within communities that are outside the
norm.
Recommendations
Recruiting artists to work in interventions is just like recruiting any other community
stakeholder, and the work is already being done. There is already work being done in public
health in conjunction with artists that are more about restructuring the ecology and built
environment of the area. Nine Mile run used artists to reinvent Pittsburgh recession stricken
factories into collaborative art pieces. Art is not just a medium for display, it is interactive and
individually based even in a group setting with specific instruction. Since many arts education
specialists have difficulty sufficing the high cost of some art programs, having a public health
basis as a justification for programming could be an asset to them as well (Carney 2010).
Two years after a highly successful arts program in an indigenous community, they found
even more success my looking into the community artists as educators. Students trusted the
artists more since they came from the community and there was not that issue of holding back
that could come from someone outside the community comes in. Usually this sort of tap into the
community for resources is intrinsic to modern intervention development and implementation,
yet this is the only study found wherein they saw the utility of community based artists as
intrinsic forces for the intervention. In their conversations with the youth participants,
facilitators also found that youth commented on how the workshop taught them new skills, and
provided new possibilities and opportunities for them to explore the arts in the future. Finally,
artist facilitators talked about the relationships formed between themselves and the youth
participants as being one of the most positive components of the workshop. (Fanian, Young, &
Mantla 2015).
It makes a lot more sense to plan a curriculum focusing on understanding the role of
artists, artistic practices, and the arts in reflecting and shaping history and culture and to then
incorporate objectives related to formal properties, analytic techniques, or media processes into
these larger themes. What is at stake is making use of the structure (intervention) to exemplify
the very heart of the art educational experience for the student, for the school, and for the
community (Gude 2007).
Works Cited
World Health Organization (WHO). (1948). Constitution of the World Health Organization in
Geneva [PDF]. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_ en.pdf.
Unknown. (2012). Mental Health: What Foundations Are Funding. Health Affairs, 31(9): 21432146.
Zhang X., Norris S.L., Gregg E.W., et al. (2005). Depressive symptoms and mortality among
persons with and without diabetes. Am J Epidemiol, 161(7); 652660.
Stuckey, H.L., Nobel, J. (2010). The Connection Between Art, Healing, and Public Health: A
Review of Current Literature. American Journal of Public Health, 100(2); 254-263.
Camic, P.M. (2008) Playing in the mud: health psychology, the arts and creative approaches to
health care. J Health Psychol, 13(2); 287-298.
Chapman, L. (1982). Art worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Erickson, M. (2002). A Developmental Dilemma: Education Stakeholders' Commitment to Art
Learning. Art Education, 55(1); 11-16.
Pumariega, A. J., Rogers, K., & Rothe, E. (2005). Culturally competent systems of care for
childrens mental health:Advances and challenges. Community Mental Health Journal, 41(5),
539555.
Lowenstein, L. (2008). Favorite Therapeutic Activities for Children and Teens: Practitioners
Share Their Most Effective Interventions [PDF]. Retrieved from
http://www.gway.org/Websites/gway/images/Creative%20Interventions.pdf.
Leroy, M.E. (2008). Time Machine. In Liana Lowenstein (Ed.), Favorite Therapeutic Activities
for Children and Teens: Practitioners Share Their Most Effective Interventions (17-18). Toronto,
ON: Champion Press.
Gray, N., Boehm, C.O., Farnsworth, A. & Wolf, D. (2010). Integration of Creative Expression
into Community Based Participatory Research and Health Promotion with Native Americans.
Fam Community Health, 33(3); 186192.
Garner, L. (2015). Creative Expression: Effectiveness of a Weekly Craft Group with Women
Who Have Experienced Trauma. Open Journal of Nursing, 5; 96-103.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper and Row,
New York.
Richardson, J. (2010). Interventionist Art Education: Contingent Communities, Social Dialogue,
and Public Collaboration. Studies in Art Education, 52(1); 18-33.
Fanian, S., Young, S.K., Mantla, M. (2015). Evaluation of the Ko` tsi`hta (We Light the
Project: building resiliency and connections through strengths-based creative arts programming
for Indigenous youth. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 74; 1-12.
Gude, O. (2007). Principles of Possibility: Considerations for a 21st-Century Art & Culture
Curriculum. Art Education, 60(1); 6-17.
Caserta, M., and Cuccia, T. (2001) The Supply of Arts Labour: Towards a Dynamic Approach.
Journal of Cultural Economics, 25 (3); 185201.
Bequette, J.W. (2009). Tapping a Postcolonial Community's Cultural Capital: Empowering
Native Artists to Engage More Fully with Traditional Culture and Their Children's Art
Education. Visual Arts Research, 35(1); 76-90.
Cheng, S.-W. (2006). Cultural goods creation, cultural capital formation, provision of cultural
services and cultural atmosphere accumulation. Journal of Cultural Economics, 30(4); 263286.
Gussak, D.E., & Ploumis-Devick, E. (2004). Creating Wellness in Correctional Populations
Through the Arts: An Interdisciplinary Model. Visual Arts Research, 30(1); 35-43.
Edmonds, E., & Leggett, M.. (2010). How Artists Fit Into Research Processes. Leonardo, 43(2);
194195.
Carney, L.S. (2010). Ecology and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Collaboration: The Case of Nine
Mile Run. RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 35(1); 63-72.