1st Edition
Using Art for Social Transformation International Perspective for Social Workers, Community Workers and Art Therapists
Social arts are manifold and are initiated by multiple actors, spaces, and direction from many directions and intentions, but generally they aim to generate personal, familial, group, community or general social transformation which can maintain and enhance personal and community resilience, communication, negotiation, and transitions, as well as help with community building and rehabilitation, civic engagement, social inclusion, and cohesion. Occurring via community empowerment, institutions, arts in health, inter-ethnic conflict, and frames of lobbying for social change, social art can transform and disrupt power relations and hegemonic narratives, destigmatize marginalized groups, and humanize society through creating empathy for the other.
This book provides a broad range of all of the above, with multiple international examples of projects (photo-voice, community theater, crafts groups for empowerment, creative place-making, arts in institutions, and arts-based participatory research) that is initiated by social practitioners and by artists – and in collaboration between the two. The aim of this book is to help to illustrate, explore, and demystify this interdisciplinary area of practice.
With methods and theoretical orientation as the focus of each chapter, the book can be used both in academic settings and for training social and art practitioners, as well as for social practitioners and artists in the field.
Introduction
Eltje Bos and Ephrat Huss
Chapter One – Social action art therapy. An Israel context
Debra Kalmanowitz, Michal Bat Or, and Tami Gavron
Chapter Two – Applied storytelling and picture talk as a tool for system intervention, behavioural change and diminishing polarization
Arjen Barel, Nerien Abu Gazaleh, and Eltje Bos
Chapter Three – Using arts as a contact method in group work with latency age Arab and Jewish youth in Israel
Noa Barkai-Kra
Chapter Four – Art in society at a time of political and cultural transformation: The Polish case
Beata Bigaj-Zwonek and Jolanta Gisman-Stoch
Chapter Five – Future IDs at Alcatraz: Transforming lives in immediate and necessary ways
Gregory Sale, Rebecca Jackson, Luis Garcia, and Jacquelyn McCroskey
Chapter Six – Group bonding through cutting, gluing, and sewing together: Using arts and crafts in social work with groups: "When members see what they have done with their own hands, this is a feeling no one can take away"
Reineth Prinsloo
Chapter Seven – Interacting through art to re-empower prison inmates in constructing new self-appraisals
Dave Gussak, Elizabeth Odom, and Evie Soape
Chapter Eight – Socia(B)le art: Towards culture for all
Blaise Patrix (translation from French by Els Luberti)
Chapter Nine – Jamming through life: Social complexity and the arts
Erik Jansen and Paola de Bruijn
Chapter Ten – Social arts for recognition: Sociological perspectives on arts and youth identities
Anna Smirnova and Nina Poluektova
Chapter Eleven – Compassion embodied – the particular power of the arts
Eva Bojner Horwitz, Tero Heinonen, Anne Birgitta Pessi, and Monica Worline
Chapter Twelve – The art studio as public health practice: Mitigating the negative impacts of social inequality through community care
Catherine Hyland Moon
Chapter Thirteen – MOMU: A multiprofessional response to a multifaceted reality
Emilio J. Gómez-Ciriano and Hugh McLaughlin
Chapter Fourteen – Using reader’s theater to enhance reflexive social work practice, research, and education
Izumi Sakamoto and Shelley Cohen Konrad
Chapter Fifteen – Harnessing structure and support in music-based activities
Brian L. Kelly
Chapter Sixteen – Madrid, city of women: A project to empower the social participation of women in the city
Marián López Fdz. Cao, Juan Carlos Gauli, and Nacho Moreno Segarra
Chapter Seventeen – Oh, what a tangled web we weave!: the transformative intentions of socially engaged art
Leanne Schubert and Mel Gray
Chapter Eighteen – The art of making public: the politics of participation in participatory art practices
Siebren Nachtergaele, Tine Vanthuyne, and Griet Verschelden
Chapter Nineteen – Evaluating arts projects and programmes designed for social impacts: The need for improved methods
Diana Betzler and Oto Potluka
Chapter Twenty - Human Rights Tattoo: a Zoom conversation between Sander van Bussel, Maria Kint, and Eltje Bos about the Human Rights Tattoo project. 21 December 2021
Sander van Bussel, Maria Kint, and Eltje Bos
Biography
Eltje Bos (PhD) is Professor Emerita of Cultural and Social Dynamics at the University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam. Also trained as a drama teacher, she focused and focuses in her work on the use of arts and creativity in social work as well as on strategies of collaboration to increase personal empowerment and livability in the city.
Ephrat Huss (PhD) is Professor of Social Work and Art Therapy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She heads an innovative MA social work specialization that integrates arts in social practice and has 40 students doing social arts projects per year. She has a background in fine arts. Her areas of research are the interface between arts and social practice and arts-based research: using arts as a way of accessing the voices of marginalized populations.
