Current Issue
Foreword
This current issue of the CAET Journal distinguishes the unique power of art in a world of imponderable change, uncertainty, pandemic turbulence, and despair. It reifies the value of physical spaces, human connections, visceral qualities, and closeness to self and to others that had once been self-evident and taken for granted and are no longer so. It postulates upon the creative experience that resonates, expands, and guides its practitioners to maintain their vitality and find their strength, supports, and virtues. The articles presented in this issue overlook global changes in mental health, society, and their ties to art, suggesting that despite the different contexts and cultures in Eastern and Western lifestyles, the arts transcend words and bridge gaps within and between cultural circles. Read more
Art and Stone: An East, West, and Global Perspective
Author: Shaun McNiff
Introductory comments and reflections on the Donna Dodson and Jun Hu articles in the current issue of CAET dealing with scholars’ rocks and rock balancing art. The artistic approaches to the stone configurations are presented as accessible and transcultural forms of artistic expression that have a worldwide aesthetic appeal. Read More
From Ikebana to Botanical Arranging: Artistic, Therapeutic, and Spiritual Alignment with Nature
Authors: Alexander Kopytin et al.
This article reviews the history of the Japanese art of Ikebana and the contemporary ecological art therapy practice involving botanical arranging and their correlation and contribution to the physical and mental well-being of human beings. Different perspectives are offered by a Brazilian Ikebana professor, with a neurological background, from the Ikenobo School, a Russian art therapist specializing in ecological art therapy, and a Chinese creative art therapist with a biomedical background. Ikebana and botanical arranging are considered forms of creative interaction with nature, providing multiple therapeutic effects and showing us how to realign with the laws of nature. Read more
Daoism and Ecology—An Interview with James Miller
Authors: Akihito Suzuki
The interview focuses on James Miller’s thinking about the relation between Daoism and ecology. Miller believes that, to develop a foundation for ecological sustainability, we need to break down the separation between human beings and the world we live in. This can be done by Daoist techniques of bodily cultivation, based on the concept of the body as porous and interpenetrating with the environment. Practices such as these will lay the groundwork for an aesthetic foundation of ecology. Read more
Enduring Liminality: Creative Arts Therapy When Nature Disrupts
Authors: Deborah Green
Ecopoiesis invites us to become response-able from within our position as part of, rather than separate from, the natural world. What happens, however, when nature disrupts? When being ‘within’ and ‘part of’ becomes disturbing? And, in such situations, what may creative arts therapy offer? When earthquakes struck my home in Aotearoa/New Zealand (2010 onwards), I floundered within my own reactions to nature unchained. And yet, through poietic engagement with natures’ creative and destructive elements, my clients and I found ways to endure and even play within the chaos. I’ve subsequently used arts-based auto-ethnography to chart positionings and practices that may help other therapists to navigate living/working within similarly uncertain situations. In this arts-based exploration, I creatively revisit arts therapy that evolved in response to earthquake disaster and invite wonderings about similar ecopoietic responses to current contexts of COVID and climate change. Read more
Symmetry — Collision of Arts and Sciences for a New Dimension
Author: Tony Yu Zhou, Fritjof Capra et al.
A dialogue concerning the arts and sciences was prompted among the panelists of an international webinar in November 2020, which featured Symmetry — a dance-opera film shot inside CERN, the largest experimental particle physics facility in the world. With the cathedral-like majesty of the Large Hadron Collider as his theater, a modern physicist searches for the smallest primordial particle and discovers a love without end. The panelists, which included the film’s writer and director, Ruben Van Leer, as well as other art directors, a dance choreographer, biomedical scientist, and art educator, shared their reflections from different perspectives on how the collision of arts and sciences can help us explore and expand a new dimension for a better understanding of human beings and nature, and the relationship between the two. The article ends with “A Systems View” of the living systems and art of Fritjof Capra, which reinforces the perspective of human-nature integration. Read more
Rhythm in Motion: developing English skills through music and creative movement
Authors: Rachel Sweeney
In August 2015 a group of seven students and staff from Liverpool Hope University in the UK visited the SOS Children’s Village just outside Galle town in Southern Sri Lanka, to partake in a two week residential program ‘Global Hope’, teaching English to children between four and fifteen. Below is lecturer Dr Rachel Sweeney’s account of their experiences at the SOS Village, reflecting on a range of somatic educational tools as applied to the pedagogic focus of teaching English through movement and music, and focusing broadly on the education values of somatics as placed within an interdisciplinary embodied approach. Read more
Music beyond Medicine – Perspectives of Chinese Pianist Interview with Kong Xiangdong
Authors: Tony Yu Zhou
Xiang-Dong Kong (born 1968, in Shanghai), Chinese pianist, one of the musicians featured in the 1979 documentary film, From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China. Kong was the Gold Medalist at the 1988 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition. In 1992 he won the Sydney International Piano Competition. Dr. Tony Zhou, the executive editor of CAET, interviewed Kong for the Featured Artist column of the journal. The pianist shared his story and mission to bring music to the public to improve the well-being of humanity. Read more
Recent Issues
Call for Submission
Click CAET Call-for-Submission 2023 summer issue (8.3). The deadline for the submission is March 1, 2023
News and Events

Marketing & PR Team Is Recruiting
IACAET (International Association of Creative Arts in Education and Therapy, www.iacaet.org) and associated journal CAET is looking for 2-3 enthusiastic colleagues

CAET Chinese Book Edition Published
The first volume of CAET Chinese Book edition is published in April 2022. The volume includes some 20 exciting articles

Shaun McNiff and Debra Kalmanowitz Received IACAET Awards
The two Co-Editors-in-Chief Emeritus received the Distinguished Service Awards for their excellent work and contribution to CAET journal at IACAET

IACAET launch ‘Research and the Arts’ Series
Dec 10, 2021. IACAET has recently launched a new Global Webinar series ‘Research and the Arts’. Research and the Arts is
Blog

Activating and Awakening Life with “Desire Finger”
I am an artist, and my love for art comes from me feeling the supportive effect of art on the

Singing, wellbeing and health by Stephen Clift
The idea that group singing is good for wellbeing and health goes back to at least the late 16th century.

Collection of photos from Wuhan, China (coronavirus epicenter)
Photos shot by various Chinese photographers during the coronavirus epidemic in China, 2020

The Common Pulse of Artistic Expression
by Shaun McNiff
by Shaun McNiff
The Common Pulse of Artistic Expression & Its Infinite Uniqueness CAET was founded by Tony Zhou in Beijing to encourage
Authors

Akihito SuzukiKeio UniversityJapan

Donna DodsonBrandeis UniversityUnited States

Liz CameronDeakin UniversityAustralia
