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This chapter analyzes art-based methods that focus on the deliverables required from the student in an academic exchange.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter analyzes art-based methods that focus on the deliverables required from the student in an academic exchange.
Methodology/approach
The study will focus on a group of second-year Master’s students who, accompanied by an artist-coach and a researcher, were asked to produce an artwork reflecting their views on the technical or theoretical issues in accounting. These works were invented and realized in a four-day workshop and exhibition organized by the students.
Findings
Student submissions were found to fit into four types of outcomes: instrumental, developmental, directed, and embedded. The first two are produced by the processes mobilized in art-based teaching, while the second two are linked to the specific form of the artwork engaged in by the teaching process. Observing that few theories have explored the range of outcomes attributable to the form, the author draws on the experiment as well as Winnicot’s concepts of transition and intermediate objects to define the specific transformative quality of art forms. By investigating the special area where the delimitations between the self and the world are blurred and changing, the art-maker student adopts a posture of a natural researcher who creates knowledge at the moment he defines his self — or to put it differently, through art-making, the student produces his/her self and his/her knowledge at the same time.
Originality/value
Recognizing that empowering the complexity of expression liberates access to knowing abilities and independent critical learning.
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Emma Gentle, Paul Linsley and John Hurley
Remote and regional Australia have comparatively fewer mental health services than their urban counterparts, what is more, mental health remains profoundly stigmatised. This study…
Abstract
Purpose
Remote and regional Australia have comparatively fewer mental health services than their urban counterparts, what is more, mental health remains profoundly stigmatised. This study aims to understand how, if at all, the process of group art-making then publicly displaying the artworks can contribute to stigma reduction for young people (YP) experiencing mental health challenges in regional Australia.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews were conducted with six young artists who use regional mental health services and 25 people who viewed their displayed art using a thematic analysis of the coded interview data.
Findings
Findings of this study demonstrated how art-making as a process increased self-esteem, social interaction and artistic expression; while the viewers experienced an emotional connection to the art. The viewer’s response enhanced YP’s confidence in their abilities.
Originality/value
Incorporating art-making and exhibiting the art in public spaces could be incorporated into YP’s mental health services to support well-being and inform the perception the general public hold of mental health, thus reducing stigma.
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The early childhood education classroom space is intrinsic to developing localized youth culture. Through a four-month-long qualitative research project in a space that focused on…
Abstract
The early childhood education classroom space is intrinsic to developing localized youth culture. Through a four-month-long qualitative research project in a space that focused on meeting the most rudimentary child needs due to staffing and fund restrictions, young children’s creativity through the arts was stunted. In a classroom setting focused on structure and strict routine at the forefront, children’s creative expression was observed through independent action and creative twists on order, instead of through activities deliberately designed to nurture creativity and expression. Since the children at the site did not seem to regularly participate in any kind of art making, or unstructured creative expression, my focus instead became the fundamentals of creativity and how young children in the classroom demonstrated choice making and agency. The objective of this study was how to understand the space from a child-centered approach to better project how to include art making, creative education, and creative expression within early childhood education sites that do not currently employ it in their curriculum. This chapter aims to situate how young children created a culture of creative expression within the boundaries of a structured early education classroom when top-down teacher interaction was at a minimum, and open-ended, non-directive materials were provided.
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Ali Coles and Tom Elliott
This paper aims to describe service user experiences of an art psychotherapy group which drew on occupational therapy perspectives to help adults with severe and enduring mental…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to describe service user experiences of an art psychotherapy group which drew on occupational therapy perspectives to help adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties move forward in their recovery.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study approach incorporating outcome data was used. The data gathered comprised attendance, facilitators’ clinical notes, photographs of participant artworks, the Psychological Outcome Profiles questionnaire (PSYCHLOPS: www.psychlops.org), a post-therapy feedback form, discussion at post-therapy individual review sessions and participants’ achievements post-group.
Findings
All but one participant scored the group as “very helpful” or “helpful” and all felt that the group had helped them with the personal aims they had identified. The PSYCHLOPS questionnaire yielded a large average effect size, indicating positive change in terms of problems, functioning and well-being. Participants identified several ways in which the group was helpful, and their artwork and reflections indicate how they used the art making in the group to pursue their recovery goals. The service user experiences and outcomes suggest that this group was effective in facilitating recovery for these adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties.
Originality/value
This group was innovative in integrating approaches from the different professional specialisms and the findings encourage further investigation into this way of working.
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Abbey MacDonald and Timothy Moss
The purpose of this paper is to offer a picture of the relationship the researchers perceive between the art and research practices, unravelling the ways the authors shape and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer a picture of the relationship the researchers perceive between the art and research practices, unravelling the ways the authors shape and inform enactment of a purposeful nexus between art making and research.
Design/methodology/approach
A hybridised methodology is adopted, where methods integral to narrative inquiry and a/r/tography are drawn together to generate a series of “pictures” of the interplay between research and artistry. Through exploration of critical events, creative prose and artefacts, the paper unfolds the parallels perceived and tensions encountered between the approaches to making art and conducting research.
Findings
Borders can create a sense of calm and safety in allowing us to organise and contain information or matter, but they are also provocative in their potential to be crossed. Through this work, the authors chart the borders of the art making and research, and how, why and when these borders might be traversed to augment the integrity of both practices. In unfolding and examining the experiences and the perceptions thereof, the authors articulate ways in which the authors find arts practice to enrich and inhibit the research, and vice versa.
Originality/value
Of particular value in this paper is the way in which the authors not only tell of the experiences as artists and researchers, but also show these experiences through a/r/tographic methods. As such this paper presents an approach to research that is generative, suggesting rather than concluding and challenging rather than resolving, and ultimately offering multiple avenues for artistic and analytic insight.
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The purpose of this paper is to first articulate and then illustrate a descriptive theoretical model of documentation (i.e. document creation) suitable for analysis of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to first articulate and then illustrate a descriptive theoretical model of documentation (i.e. document creation) suitable for analysis of the experiential, first-person perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
Three models of documentation in the literature are presented and synthesized into a new model. This model is then used to understand the findings from a phenomenology-of-practice study of the work of seven visual artists as they each created a self-portrait, understood here as a form of documentation.
Findings
A number of themes are found to express the first-person experience of art-making in these examples, including communicating, memories, reference materials, taking breaks and stepping back. The themes are discussed with an eye toward articulating what is shared and unique in these experiences. Finally, the themes are mapped successfully to the theoretical model.
Research limitations/implications
The study involved artists creating self-portraits, and further research will be required to determine if the thematic findings are unique to self-portraiture or apply as well to art-making, to documentation generally, etc. Still, the theoretical model developed here seems useful for analyzing documentation experiences.
Practical implications
As many activities and tasks in contemporary life can be conceptualized as documentation, this model provides a valuable analytical tool for better understanding those experiences. This can ground education and management decisions for those involved.
Originality/value
This paper makes conceptual and empirical contributions to document theory and the study of the information behavior of artists, particularly furthering discussions of information and document experience.
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Tamsin Bradley, Atem Beny and Rebecca Lorins
The fundamental relationship between art and resilience is striking in this passage and in the reflections shared by other artists. This paper aims to attempt to piece together…
Abstract
Purpose
The fundamental relationship between art and resilience is striking in this passage and in the reflections shared by other artists. This paper aims to attempt to piece together the fragmented and insecure realities in South Sudan through the lens of different artists. The paper argues that focusing on art is an important way into a deeper more nuanced picture of how women and men find and maintain resilience in humanitarian contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
The data is qualitatively collected through an innovative art-based creative method known as story circles. The circles consisted of artists who shared what their art form meant to them.
Findings
The picture that emerges contrasts starkly against the dark narratives that commonly portray South Sudan. Art making spaces and the outputs that come from them are cultural resources often overlooked by humanitarian stakeholders and yet, as the authors show, hold the potential to support more locally rooted and responsive approaches to resilience building.
Originality/value
Very little research has been conducted on the ways in which people in South Sudan draw on and find resilience in art and art making.
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