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- Volume 7, Issue 2, 2016
Journal of Applied Arts & Health - Volume 7, Issue 2, 2016
Volume 7, Issue 2, 2016
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Art therapy at the border: Holding the line of the kite
Authors: Debra Kalmanowitz and Bobby LloydAbstractThis article looks at the use of kite making and kite flying in art therapy in two border refugee camps in Europe in 2016. The authors explore the physical and psychological meaning of borders and the role that kite activity played in psychosocial support in this uncertain and frequently volatile environment, with recently arrived refugees. The kite activity is explored for its potential to enhance resilience, its capacity to connect with life beyond the refugee camp, to serve to distract the individual or group and its ability to draw on protective factors, both personal and cultural.
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The stories we share: Reflections on a community-based art exhibit displaying work by refugees and immigrants
More LessAbstractThere are currently 65.3 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide (UNHCR, 2016). Refugees and immigrants often enter host countries with psychological disorders and complex trauma, but, globally, newcomer mental health needs continue to be underserved and under-researched. Newcomers may also experience antinewcomer sentiment upon arrival to host countries. In order to improve newcomer mental health and to increase positive community connections, researchers have advocated for strengths-based, action-oriented approaches to mental health care (Tedeschi & Calhoun 2004). Expressive arts therapy is a culturally-congruent approach that meets these suggestions. The current study describes a communityand school- based expressive therapies programme designed for newcomers resettled in North Carolina. It focuses on the programme’s annual art exhibit, where newcomers’ stories and images are displayed within the greater community. Survey results from the show indicate that attendees were inspired and informed by the narratives, and shared their own stories in response.
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Out of the shadow: A collaborative arts performance for the black rain hibakusha
Authors: Aya Kasai and Masae YuasaAbstractIn July of 2015, a group of undesignated hibakusha – survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima – gathered to prepare for a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government. Having suffered for decades from the debilitating effects of radioactive fallout, these hibakusha sought official recognition of their hardship and an end to their exclusion from the support measures granted to survivors who had lived closer to the bomb’s hypocentre. Their plight, as well as the continued failure of the government to recognize and address their suffering, provided the impetus for our group to co-create and host an art performance for and in support of all undesignated hibakusha. This article documents our process of participatory arts research and performance – as well as the audience and hibakusha response – while suggesting how applied arts and activism can unite in the face of institutional discrimination, civic prejudice and discursive erasure.
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Breathing in and breathing out: Expressive arts in psycho-social support training in Korea
Authors: Vivien Marcow Speiser and Aviel HadariAbstractThis article will describe an expressive therapy psychosocial training approach used in august 2014 with groups of clinicians, clergy and community workers in Korea following the sinking of the Sewol ferry in April 2014. The co-facilitators were expressive arts therapists who live in Israel and the United States, respectively, and the expressive arts modalities used in this programme included dance and movement, storytelling, enactment, music and visual arts. The training programme drew upon the facilitators’ backgrounds in working with trauma and ritual in expressive therapy practice and was developed as a support to caregivers in the development of resilience and protective factors to combat feelings of isolation and compassion fatigue.
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Finding voice: Creating vision, the trailblazing work of Gloria Simoneaux and Harambee Arts
Authors: Gloria Simoneaux, Doreen Maller, Lauren Gogarty and Sarala TamangAbstractThis article explores the work of international humanitarian Gloria Simoneaux who brings Expressive Arts healing practices to people in times and places of crisis. Using art as a vehicle for healing, the Harambee Arts method considers the challenges of inclusion, of vulnerability, of connection and of lovingly building communities of care and growth. Throughout her life, Gloria Simoneaux has worked with and developed programmes for the vulnerable and underserved; in 1989, she founded DrawBridge: An Arts Program for Homeless Children, still vibrant today, which has served more than 15,000 children in the San Francisco Bay Area.
My work draws on three sources – profound love and respect for children, an understanding of the powerful benefits of play as a healing tool, and a belief that everyone has something of value to deliver to society and deserves an opportunity to give back.
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The Stuck in Traffick film project: Engaging young men in community-based expressive arts activism
More LessAbstractThe Stuck in Traffick film project (SIT) is a community-based, expressive arts activism project supported by the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation’s Margaret’s Place program (MP). SIT was sparked by the vision of five teen male participants of the MP peer leadership and young men’s groups in Brooklyn, New York, in 2013. Through an integrative, expressive arts-based process, the young men used filmmaking to explore the relationship between two social issues that called to them: Domestic Violence and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. This article will discuss the SIT film project process, which included community-based expressive arts enquiry, production, exhibition and aesthetic response.
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Can the arts help ordinary people make a difference? A private investigator’s perspective
More LessAbstractIn this article the author describes the challenges for the ordinary person confronted with an opportunity to change a community mired in violence by using the arts. Her profound experiences in Guyana, South America, reinforce the idea that the arts can be the driving influence of change for both the community and for the author herself. Current practices in the treatment and prevention of violence against women and children in Guyana is lacking. An arts-based project focused on photographs of people’s faces taken by fifteen young people from ages 11 to 17, in black and white blown up to oversized posters (3’×5’) were pasted on the walls in communities around the capitol city of Georgetown, Guyana. The artist JR’s TED Talk statement, ‘What we see changes who we are’, was adopted to create the WITNESS Project.
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Trauma and creative healing: Reflections on providing music therapy in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina
More LessAbstractThe Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, was created to use music and the arts to address the traumas resulting from the Civil Wars. This article uses a case study to outline how the Centre’s music therapy department addressed intergenerational trauma in children following the wars. In addition, themes from the author’s recent qualitative research serve as a lens to re-examine the therapeutic work in a post-war environment. Resources for therapists, such as supervision, personal therapy and creative arts outlets, are highlighted. Self-examination is considered as it relates to sociocultural elements of a host country.
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Artsbridge: Conflict mitigation with Israeli and Palestinian youth
More LessAbstractArtsbridge Inc., founded in 2008, utilizes the arts, reflecting dialogue and expressive therapy to work with teens from Israel, The Palestinian Authority and the United States in order to empower its students to create constructive change within their communities. This article discusses their unique approach to conflict mitigation, which trains students to think critically and creatively, and to work together constructively. The intended goals of Artsbridge Inc. are to empower its students, to provide them with effective communication skills, to deal with the pernicious effects of protracted conflict, to instill a sense of hope that change is possible and to empower them to work towards that change.
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Garden of Peace: Responding to the challenge of a civilization of peace
More LessAbstractThis article focuses on insights from the application of the ARTiculation modality in trauma and conflict transformation through the Garden of Peace projects (1989–) with specific reference to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It is argued that ARTiculation provides a safe, fact-based concrete form of knowing-by-being, thus naturally allowing to reconcile our culturally enshrined mind–body split. Due to the function of our innate Dialogic Intelligence (DIN) capacity, ARTiculation is distinguished by its natural transformative realism combining mindfulness and creative action with epigenetic insights on the individual and cultural levels in tandem.
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