This 2022 winter issue has a focus on interdisciplinary and international approaches to undertaking research using the arts. Research and the arts is an integral component toward advancing and serving the field of creative arts in education, therapy, health, and community. At the very core of this field of inquiry is the place that the arts in research methodologies have to further our understanding of some of the complex issues we face in society today. This approach is in line with the mission of the International Association for Creative Arts in Education and Therapy (IACAET), and our belief that the aesthetic and creative use of the arts, integrated with body-mind-spirit, are essential for individual and collective well-being, social change, and the advancement of our collective humanity and planet. Read more

Authors: Dan Summer, Brigitt Yermakov

As the Earth suffers from climate change, global warming, and its inhabitants’ irresponsibility, environmental activists suggest that Earth’s inhabitants must participate in social action to find greater consciousness and compassion for self and others in their relationships with the Earth. The authors engaged in five weekly sessions to use nature-assisted eco-art therapy to explore their individual processes. Read More

Author: Ying (Ingrid) Wang

This paper explores the power of the arts and the spiritual support of one’s own culture in helping an immigrant arts therapist process professional compassion fatigue. Through autoethnographic narrative and arts-based inquiry, I intend to dive into the emotional distress arising from this immigrant therapist’s experience of compassion fatigue in a creative way.  Read more

Authors: Sarah Skyrme, Susan Hogan

This article explores the particular benefits of arts-based interventions with refugee women and girls and the potentialities for enhancing social justice. This truncated review of literature makes reference to arts-based communication, notions of female empowerment, symbolism and metaphor, and expressions of identity and agency and then moves on to explore a number of primarily participatory arts-based interventions with women and girl refugees, looking at the particular affordances yielded. Read more

Authors: Dina Fried, Gideon Zehavi

In this preliminary study, we propose an expressive and interactive research method using a developmental transformations (DvT) model and a multimodal art response as applied to an art-based research (ABR) design, specifically relating to the experience of social rejection. We explored three research questions: Can the experience of social rejection be understood through playful interactions in DvT play? How does playing with the experience of rejection vary in solo play, play with an object, and play with a partner—i.e., otherness? How do researchers’ responses to participants enrich this understanding?  Read more

Author: Sarah Bilodeau

This article is presented as a clinical case study in research and the arts that explores the journey of a 7-year-old girl with selective mutism, and her growth through an integrative intervention that combined dramatherapy, systemic, behavioral, and attachment-informed approaches. Sessions took place in Shanghai, China. Gorla et al. (2017) [Without words. Different children in different contexts (Trans.). A.G. Editions] and Perednik (2016) [The selective mutism treatment guide: Manuals for parents, teachers, and therapists: Still waters run deep. Oaklands] propose that the significant others of a person with selective mutism can become therapeutic agents of change, and through this lens, the child’s family, peers, and school staff became involved.  Read more

Author: Michal Lev

This article presents the primacy of video in research. It integrates notes from art-based research that used a GoPro video camera to explore intimate experience, with demonstrating applications of video for documentation, artistic inquiry, systematic processing, analysis, and presentation of results. The article addresses the natural linkage between artistic expression both in-person and online and its relation to intimacy.   Read more

Authors: Liwen Ma, Wen-Lung Chang, Clive Holmwood, Joseph L. Subbiondo

Self-development is an important basis for the professional development of teachers and future teachers. In this study, future teachers are graduate students whose majors are school counseling and mental health education. The performance of playback theater (PT) in the classroom has become an integral part of teaching, especially for teaching integral drama-based pedagogy (IDBP). Using qualitative research methods, researchers found that PT enables future teachers to deeply develop and experience “respect” and “empathy.”  Read more

Author: Vivien Marcow Speiser

Pamela Silver is a South African-born artist who lived as a child in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She completed her BA at the University of Cape Town, SA, and Goldsmith College in the UK and continued her studies in the arts in the USA and Israel. She immigrated to Israel in 1973, where she currently lives. She considers herself to be an intuitive artist creating artwork in watercolors, prints, and oils. Pamela studied at Art Students’ League, New York, from 1982 to 1983, and is a member of the Israel Society of Painters and Sculptors since 1985. She has exhibited in over 90 exhibitions worldwide, including 25 solo exhibitions.  Read more

Author: Annie Heiderscheit

Music Psychotherapy and Anxiety: Social, Community, and Clinical Contexts is a comprehensive text providing a holistic exploration of anxiety, the sociocultural factors impacting it, and how music and music therapy can be instrumental in addressing and transforming its debilitating effects. The text is divided into four sections, and it provides the reader with a detailed overview of theoretical dimensions, physiological dimensions, clinical-cultural dimensions, and applied dimensions. The format of the text provides guideposts for the reader as they strive to develop a fuller and deeper understanding of the impact and nuanced aspects of living with and experiencing anxiety. Read more