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- Volume 7, Issue 3, 2016
Journal of Applied Arts & Health - Volume 7, Issue 3, 2016
Volume 7, Issue 3, 2016
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Using Internet based arts to promote inter-generational meetings between young people and senior citizens: The Playmäkers project in Sweden
Authors: Eva Bojner Horwitz and Ephrat HussAbstractThis article studies the application of a multi-purpose, arts-based intervention for young adults interacting with members of the elderly population who have dementia. The project studied uses online cultural products as a mediating element for communication between the youths and the elders. The project aims to harness the technological sophistication of young adults, here called Playmäkers (PM), to offer elderly sufferers of dementia access to music, movies and visual arts, which the elderly participant remembers from their youth. This process includes the nurses and family as additional participants and culminates in a group presentation of the arts. This article, using a qualitative case study method, aims to explore the phenomenological impact of such a programme on the residents, nurses, youths and residents’ families in two residential wards with 68 patients. The theoretical frame of analysis includes non-verbal embodied communication, emotional mind, arts in health and psychosocial interventions for youth. Implications for applying this programme are derived from the data and discussed.
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When diet and exercise are not enough: How Theatre for Health helps resolve gaps in current programmes addressing obesity
More LessAbstractThis article analyses the use of Theatre for Health as another programming approach to understanding and addressing the issue of obesity with adults. The author reviews current health and wellness programmes that focus on obesity and examines the potential for Theatre for Health to address programming gaps. A series of Theatre for Health workshops on bodies and weight designed and facilitated by the author between 2010 and 2016 is examined as an example of how Theatre for Health can help participants recognize and explore the sociocultural and emotional experiences that shape their beliefs about and behaviours relating to weight. The author shares key findings from an analysis of participants’ workshop participation, discusses challenges to the work, and offers suggestions for moving the work forward.
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The art of growing leaders: Supporting identity and leadership development through arts-based selfexpression
Authors: Janelle Junkin, Girija Kaimal, Julia Terry and Kris SmithAbstractThis article presents findings from the evaluation of a year-long urban-school arts programme called the Art of Growing Leaders (AGL). The goals of AGL were to support youth engagement in schools, enhance resilience, improve self-awareness and interpersonal relationships, and support leadership development through selfexpression in visual arts, poetry and narratives. The evaluation study used a quasiexperimental research design measuring student perceptions at baseline, midpoint and end line. The results of the 30-week programme indicated that student perceptions changed most significantly in the ability to describe the artistic process and selfperceived skills in the arts. Qualitative and drawing-based data further indicated that students developed deeper awareness of self, and reported improved interactions with their peers and schools. The project and findings highlight the application of a visual arts programme to support psycho-social development in youth.
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‘I’m not a therapist you know... I’m an artist’: Facilitating well-being and basic psychological needs satisfaction through community arts participation
AbstractThe role of the artist is crucial to the success of arts for health initiatives yet remains under-explored in the research literature. This article examines the practice of arts facilitation through the lens of self-determination theory (SDT). Fourteen interviews with artists leading projects for older adults across three settings were subject to a secondary thematic analysis. A hybrid approach was adopted with themes developed inductively and deductively. Artists were found to satisfy participants’ basic psychological needs in diverse ways. Autonomy: artists spoke of valuing the expression of individual differences and identities, encouraging participants to assume ownership of projects. Competence: developing participants’ aptitudes and skills and repairing negative self-beliefs emerged as common goals. Relatedness: artists sought to cultivate social interaction within groups and forge relationships with participants themselves. Self-determination theory provides a well-validated framework to conceptualize the psycho-social processes mediating arts project outcomes relating to psychological well-being.
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Picture of health: An artist’s journey through disease as told in his photographs
More LessAbstractThis is a phenomenological study of a photographer who used his artistic sensibilities to deal with a life-threatening illness, which became a life-changing journey. As J. was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease, knew he would die if he did not get a new liver, waited for that liver, went through the transplant surgery and subsequent surgeries, and recovered, he chronicled the entire journey with photographs. When diagnosed with a terminal illness, J. faced mortality and went through stages of grief and loss, as well as experiencing trauma, and used his photography to cope with this. J. also went through a process of transformation, whereby the patient moves through a five-stage trajectory of receiving the transplant, improving in hospital, improving at home, feeling well again, and reciprocating. J. continues on that journey with a commitment to health and life. Literature is reviewed regarding the stages of grief, loss, trauma and emotional state of transplant patients.
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Improving the hospital experience with music
By Judith RaabAbstractThis report examines twelve peer-reviewed articles that explore the intervention of music in the hospital environment. The articles vary in descriptions of how music is delivered to patients. However, the authors all assert value from offering this creative service to possibly reduce pain and provide comfort. The Sonke et al. study recommends guidelines for music performances on hospital floors to enrich the workplace for staff. Some research focuses more on standardization of reporting for the arts in medicine field, while Clift specifically writes about the increased interest in arts interventions with the need for evidence showing positive outcomes from this financially affordable programming. DeVelder emphasizes the importance of collaboration and scientific dialogue between the medical community and arts practitioners. Practice comparisons are reflected upon to achieve the most benefit for patients, their families, and hospital staff. All of the writers agree that music has the potential to improve the hospital experience. The conclusions of the authors represent that more research is warranted on music in facilities to raise acceptance and quality of outcomes from the arts in medicine.
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Circle of compassion: Arts and nursing – the stimulation of compassionate awareness
Authors: Catharine Salmon and Helen ChildsAbstractThis article has two authors – the artist/patient and the nurse educator. Their meeting point was an arts-based research project inspired by a personal experience of compassionate care from a hospital nursing team. The artist/patient developed an exhibition – Touching the Unthinkable, which explored the ‘voices’ of health teams, other hospital patients and visitors linked by the treatment of breast cancer. The nurse educator used art practices as part of a nursing pedagogy to facilitate students’ understanding of themselves, the patient experience and the centrality of compassion. It was discovered that many of the inspirational hospital nurses had previously engaged with art as part of their education. The authors have identified what they have termed the circle of compassion – if compassion is enhanced in students and sustained in practicing nurses it is then experienced by the patient/recipient.
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Reviews
Authors: Aimee Loth Rozum, Shelagh Cornish, Vanessa Pierce, Sarah Deaver and Karen vanMeenenAbstractEXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY FOR TRAUMATIZED CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS, CARMEN RICHARDSON (2016) New York: Routledge, 260 pp., ISBN: 9780415733786, p/bk, $38.21
MULTICULTURAL FAMILY ART THERAPY, CHRISTINE KERR (ED.) (2015) New York: Routledge, 258 pp., ISBN: 9780415827324, p/bk, $43.96
ART THERAPY: INTEGRATING CREATIVITY, HEALING & PROFESSIONALISM, 2016 AMERICAN ART THERAPY ASSOCIATION’S 47TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, USA, 6–10 JULY 2016
CONVERGING IN THE HEARTLAND: POETIC EXPRESSION FOR HEALING MIND, BODY AND SOUL, 2016 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF POETRY THERAPY’S 36TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, USA, 14–17 APRIL 2016
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