Journal of Applied Arts & Health - Volume 6, Issue 1, 2015

Background: Massively Multiplayer Online Games create concerns for the health and well-being of young adults. The purpose of the article is to give a deeper insight into online game players’ ethical thinking and how playing online games affects their daily lives and relationships with others in the real world. Method: Data are collected from ten qualitative research interviews in Norway. The article contributes with two philosophical interpretations of the young people’s stories: the fundamental ethics of Emmanuel Levinas and Pragmatic Aesthetics. Findings: Online gaming can be a momentary aesthetic escape from reality, but players can become morally constrained when their behaviour affects those close to them. Constant conflict due to excessive gaming can cause them to retreat further into the game as an escape from real-world pressures. Conclusion: Moral responsibility is not only the young person’s concern. The diversity of moral concerns needs to be acknowledged.

This article explores the use of visual methods to explore women’s experience of pregnancy, childbirth and the adjustment to motherhood in a British context; it is particularly interested in thinking about whether visual methods can help deliver new insights into these experiences and what forms these might take. The work is not making universal claims about maternal experience, but rather is interested in the vibrancy, intensity and freshness that visual methods can bring to elucidate human experience.

What if when Romeo met Juliet he was already addicted to Internet porn, and wanted to film their first sexual experience and upload it for all the world to see? ‘Project XXX’ was a four year creative project run by Kim Wiltshire and Paul Hine, the aim of which was to create a piece of multimedia theatre that would explore the effect the availability and mainstreaming of Internet porn might be having on the lives of young people. Through a series of participatory workshops material was collated to create the multimedia play which toured the north of England in 2014, supplemented by further workshops and discussions around the subject, using theatre as a public forum for discussion of a sensitive subject that was very much in the public consciousness at the time. This article explores the process for the artists in researching and creating a piece of work on this subject, as well as considering the outcomes and findings from both the initial stages of the research into the issue and the creative issues faced in bringing this piece of work to the professional stage.

Contemporary museum paradigms that address social responsibility, value diverse interpretations and promote communication create novel possibilities for cultural connections and exchanges. Evidencing these new roles, the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) in Bogotá, Colombia, offered an art therapy programme to serve internally displaced indigenous women (IDIW) of Wounaan and Guambiano ethnicities. The qualities of museums as safe holding environments able to serve in processes of acculturation, surfaced in the course of the art therapy programme. This article bridges discourses related to museums, immigrant populations and the object relations construct of potential space through the common denominator of the interplay between internal and external realities.

This review article seeks to strengthen the theoretical basis for the use of community-based arts programmes to promote mental health and well-being. This is done by introducing the Salutogenic Model of health promotion and the recovery approach in mental health and applying their relevance to social and political trends in the United Kingdom today. Salutogenesis has much to offer the theory and practice of health promotion, and in particular arts-based approaches. Mental health outcomes are difficult to define and prescribe for, though community-based arts approaches may help to strengthen individuals and communities. Community-based arts programmes are well placed to meet these various agendas and are able to contribute to meeting the social and identity needs of people with mental health problems.

There are increasing societal concerns regarding the lack of resources available to meet the multifaceted needs of the growing elderly population in the western world. In an effort to address the cognitive and social needs of this population, the author received guidance from the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine in initiating a novel form of Bibliotherapy, held weekly at a local respite-care centre. While conventional Bibliotherapy – the use of literature to promote well-being – involves private readings and reflection, the current Bibliotherapy programme involved meeting in a small group setting (from three to twelve individuals), reading aloud various types of literature (poetry, short stories, science articles, cultural fables, newspaper clips and jokes) and reflecting on the readings together. The reflection time included sharing of interpretations, discussing stimulated memories and considering relevant life issues and challenges. In observing this act of reflection, the author noted that otherwise isolated individuals discuss their feelings of loneliness and irrelevance, interact with a group, remember long-lost memories and consider stimulating topics. The dramatic success of this uniquely structured programme demonstrates that read-aloud group Bibliotherapy carried out within care centres for the elderly may have an impactful role in addressing the unmet cognitive and social needs of this population.

Data, both qualitative and quantitative, which represents the physical, cognitive and situational abilities of the global population are inconsistent and are not centrally collected by any one international source. Moreover, the definition of ‘disability’ is relative and is linked uniquely to culture. This fluidity makes difficult the standardization of a definitive definition of disability, problematic to quantify and the goal of universal design elusive. Some statistical estimates place the number of disabled persons between 20 and 60 per cent of the world population, the normalization and aggregation of disability statistics remains a low priority for most international governing bodies and this gap in knowledge impacts the ability of designers to adequately consider the needs and abilities of all users when designing places, spaces, products, services and systems. This research note puts forth one potential testing model for systems of visual communication and information-based graphics and graphic systems for a universal design identity system as well as a discussion of the results from the first use of this testing model.

Presence and Process in Expressive Arts Work – At the Edge of Wonder, Herbert Eberhart and Sally Atkins (2014) London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 184 pp., ISBN: 9781849059572, p/bk, £17.99/$28.95

Ethics in Art Therapy: Challenging Topics for a Complex Modality, Lisa R. Furman (2013) London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers London and Philadelphia, 128 pp., ISBN: 9781849059381, p/bk, £17.99

Enhancing Lives through Arts & Health: 25th Anniversary Conference & Celebration 2014 Global Alliance for Arts & Health Conference, Houston, Texas, USA, 9–12 April 2014

5th Annual Healing Arts Coalition Conference: Growing up Autism, 21 November 2014