Arts in Health, also known as Arts for Health, is an umbrella term used to describe the domain of using the arts to enhance our (mental) health and well-being. It involves a heterogeneous range of professionals who use the arts in various ways, with different goals and outcomes. The practices of these professionals can be placed on a continuum based on the variety of goals and outcomes, ranging from promoting social connection or well-being to treating (mental) health conditions. Recent discussions in the Netherlands have raised questions about the position of creative arts therapists on this continuum. This opinion paper addresses this issue by providing a brief overview of the development of the profession of creative arts therapists, the working areas of creative arts therapists and the growing evidence base of creative arts therapeutic interventions. The practices of creative arts therapists are positioned on the continuum, where the emphasis on and accountability for the clients’ (mental) health increases and evidence-informed use of the arts within a more clearly delineated and legally safeguarded professional framework are present. Knowing where the practices of creative arts therapists are placed can assist in identifying when to choose creative arts therapists, other professionals combining arts and healthcare, or a combination of professionals.
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This paper will discuss the process of the MA program ePedagogy / Visual Knowledge Building during the first semester of the academic year 2005 – 2006. This MA program is a joint venture between the Universities of Helsinki, Hamburg and INHOLLAND. This publication will discuss and evaluate the concrete steps (in terms of learning process) during this first semester. In particular the role of the eTutor will get special attention. This publication is based on the principle of action research. Hart & Bond defines action research as “it is a form of reflective inquiry which enables practitioners to better realise such qualities in their practice. The tests for good action research are very pragmatic ones. Does it improve the professional quality of the transactions between practitioners and clients/colleagues? This action research approach is being realised upon three main sources. As an eTutor and member of the staff of this program I weekly filled in an “Evaluation Log” in which the following questions are centralized: 1. What happened (this week) 2. Significant experience 3. Reflection 4. Actions Secondly I used a little survey which was being used by the staff to evaluate the first semester. All the three Universities filled in a form with the following questions concerning the education and organisation: Education 1. What do you consider most hindering in your teaching? 2. What do you consider most beneficial in your teaching? 3. What kind of teaching methods do you prefer in this program? 4. Do you think the course offers are attractive for the target group? 5. How do you evaluate student’s engagements and motivation in your courses? 6. What can / should be improved in terms of collaborative learning activities and processes? Organisation 1. In what specific context do you spot organisational constraints? 2. Does your organisation recognise and support the MA program? 3. What is your short-, mid- and long term vision on this program? Thirdly an important source for this action research approach was the International Seminar which was hold in the middle of February 2006. In this seminar the changes based on the questions of the questionnaire were discussed and implemented. The theoretical framework in this publication is based on the dissertation of Karel Kreijns (Sociable CSCL Environments). In this dissertation he discussed the collaborative cognitiveand epistemic performance in a CSCLE. The social presence theory takes a central position in this dissertation. In this paper the pitfalls and barriers concerning a sociable CSCLE are being discussed and evaluated. This paper describes, the interventions the staff took, in order to improve the educational context of the program. From this perspective we looked very carefully to the barriers and pitfalls in our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). We found evidence for the fact that a good CSCLE consists at least a good balance between Content, Community and Pedagogy. In the program we emphasised our focus (too much) on content and (too) little on community and pedagogy. The community was poor because of the fact that we used three content learning systems, which didn’t stimulate the group processes. Pedagogy was too much based on individual eTutor behaviour. In January 2006, after the courses were ended, the Universities organised a little survey. In this survey was shown that we have to some interventions to improve the learning process. At the International Seminar in February 2006 eTutors and students discussed the problems. The following interventions are being considered and implemented: 1. The use of three Virtual Learning Environments should be decreased. Especially the INHOLLAND / Blackboard system doesn’t reflect the open source philosophy. Besides this the accessibility of this system is not very easy for foreign students 2. The collaborative aspect should be increased, by emphasising the interdisciplinaryand international co-operation. The formation of international subgroups is implemented.
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Twenty sixteen year old fourth-graders of the School for Young Talent (School voor Jong Talent) in The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Design, Music and Dance (Hogeschool van Beeldende Kunsten, Muziek en Dans) participated in a pilot project that combined music, dance and visual arts in a creative process. A group of six teachers from three different disciplines guided the young artists. This report shows how this process took place and indicates some of the issues that were encountered along the way.
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Abstract: This study sought to provide insight into how art activities influence the well-being of long-term care residents, and how artists and caregivers collaborate in offering these activities. In two long-term care facilities for people with dementia and one for older people with chronic psychiatric disorders, an uncontrolled pre- and post-test study was conducted using a mixed-method design. Forty-six residents participated in the study. Three art activities—(a) dance, (b) music and movement, and (c) visual arts—were studied and co-created with the residents and executed by artists and caregivers together in eight to ten weeks. The Face expression scale (FACE) was used to examine the extent to which participating in the art activity influenced resident mood. Qualitative data were collected via group discussions with artists, caregivers, residents, and an informal caregiver. The results indicated that participating in an art activity positively influenced resident mood (p < 0.000). p-values for the three art activities were: p < 0.000 for dance, p = 0.048 for music and movement, and p = 0.023 for visual arts. The qualitative data revealed that joining an art activity provided a positive effect, increased social relationships, and improved self-esteem for residents. The collaboration between artists and caregivers stimulated creativity, beauty, and learning from each other, as well as evoking emotions.
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In today’s technological world, human intertwinement with the rest of nature hasbeen severely diminished. In our digital culture, many people hardly have any direct experience of and sense of connection with “the real” of the natural world. The author assumes that when we want to find ways to mend this gap, arts-based environmental education (AEE) can play a meaningful role. In AEE, artmaking is regarded as itself a way of potentially gaining new understandings about our natural environment. As a reflective practitioner, the author facilitated three different AEE activities, at several times and at diverse locations. On basis of his observations, memories, written notes, audio-visual recordings and interviews with participants, teachers and informed outsiders, he interpreted the experiences both of participants and himself. To this end he employed interpretative phenomenological analysis paired with autoethnography.The artmaking activities researched here aimed to bring about a shift in focus. Participants were encouraged to approach natural phenomena not head-on, but in an indirect way. Moreover, the artmaking process aspired to heighten their awareness to the presence of their embodied self at a certain place. The research questions that the author poses in this study are: (1) What is distinctive in the process of the AEE activities that I facilitate?; (2) Which specific competencies can be identified for a facilitator of AEE activities?; and (3) Does participating in the AEE activities that I facilitate enhance the ability of participants to have a direct experience of feeling connected to the natural world?In this explorative study, the author identifies facilitated estrangement through participating in AEE as an important catalyst when aiming to evoke such instances of transformative learning. In undergoing such moments, participants grope their way in a new liminal space. Artmaking can create favorable conditions for this to happen through its defamiliarizing effect which takes participants away from merely acting according to habit (on “autopilot”). The open-ended structure of the artmaking activities contributed to the creation of a learning arena in which emergent properties could become manifest. Thus, participants could potentially experience a sense of wonder and begin to acquire new understandings – a form of knowing that the author calls “rudimentary cognition.” The research further suggests that a facilitator should be able to bear witness to and hold the space for whatever enfolds in this encounter with artistic process in AEE. He or she must walk the tightrope between control and non-interfering.The analysis of the impacts of the AEE activities that were facilitated leads the author to conclude that it is doubtful whether these in and of themselves caused participants to experience the natural environment in demonstrable new and deep ways. He asserts that most of their awareness was focused on the internal level of their own embodied presence; engagement with place, the location where the AEE activity was performed, seemed secondary. The findings show that AEE activities first and foremost help bring about the ignition and augmentation of the participants’ fascination and curiosity, centered in an increased awareness of their own body and its interactions with the natural world. The present study can be seen as a contribution to efforts of envisaging innovative forms of sustainable education that challenge the way we have distanced ourselves from the more-than-human world.
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Empirical studies in the creative arts therapies (CATs; i.e., art therapy, dance/movement therapy, drama therapy, music therapy, psychodrama, and poetry/bibliotherapy) have grown rapidly in the last 10 years, documenting their positive impact on a wide range of psychological and physiological outcomes (e.g., stress, trauma, depression, anxiety, and pain). However, it remains unclear how and why the CATs have positive effects, and which therapeutic factors account for these changes. Research that specifically focuses on the therapeutic factors and/or mechanisms of change in CATs is only beginning to emerge. To gain more insight into how and why the CATs influence outcomes, we conducted a scoping review (Nstudies = 67) to pinpoint therapeutic factors specific to each CATs discipline, joint factors of CATs, and more generic common factors across all psychotherapy approaches. This review therefore provides an overview of empirical CATs studies dealing with therapeutic factors and/or mechanisms of change, and a detailed analysis of these therapeutic factors which are grouped into domains. A framework of 19 domains of CATs therapeutic factors is proposed, of which the three domains are composed solely of factors unique to the CATs: “embodiment,” “concretization,” and “symbolism and metaphors.” The terminology used in change process research is clarified, and the implications for future research, clinical practice, and CATs education are discussed.
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Higher education has the potential to act as ecosystem catalysts, connecting with the places our institutions which they are a part of, for learning-based changes with wicked (sustainability) challenges. This, however, calls for reorienting and rethinking of the higher educational narratives and subsequent practices towards more ecological and relational ones. In this study, a pilot aimed to connect a course at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (The Netherlands) to an industrial park next to the university which is undergoing transition towards a sustainable living space. The pilot, which ran from September 2020 to February 2021, included 17 students from 9 nationalities and 12 different bachelor programmes, and was designed according to the concepts of an ‘ecology of learning’. In this semester long course, called Mission Impact, students reflected every five-weeks, to capture their learning experiences using a combination of arts-based and narrative reflection methods. Two questions guided the analysis: (1) what are the key design characteristics of an ecological approach to higher education that connects to sustainability transformations (in times of COVID-19) and (2) what does this type of education asks from to learners. The reflective artefacts were analysed using Narratives of T-Mapping and juxtaposed with autoethnographic insights maintained by the first author for triangulation. Preliminary results of this pilot include the structure in chaos, space for transformation, openness for emerging futures & action confidence as components of such an ecological education that connects to and co-creates sustainability transformations.
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This book provides insight into an ambitious project to re-invent the educational method practiced at NHL Stenden. The predecessors used different approaches to the delivery of education. One of them used Competency-Based Education, whilst the other practiced Problem-Based Learning. The choice to combine the advantages of both methods, as well as to develop an entirely new concept that provided a better response to the fast and ever-increasing pace of changes in the workplace, was made by both institutions together. This approach was called Design-Based Education (DBE). Given the significant changes required of stakeholders to facilitate learning according to the new DBE approach, it is important to take stock of what these changes mean in terms of teaching and learning and to ascertain from early steps how everybody can stay, or step, on board.
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Illustration by Dr. Sandra Geelhoed. Dr. Sandra Geelhoed is a sociologist, art educator and co-operation partner. Dr Geelhoed is conducting a research project on narrative accountability at the Research Centre for Social Innovation at HU University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht. Since January 2019, she produces visual accounts of conferences, meetings and gatherings, in narrative research schemes and participatory action research (PAR) settings. Through these experiments, she explores the notion of representation of people’s voice.
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This ‘Big Ideas’ paper will explore the relevance of the constraintsled approach (Davids et al., 2008) for nurse education, specifically when teaching nursing skills. The constraints-led approach is an applied theory, based on the ecological-dynamics framework, which explains that skill learning is a process of adjusting to the characteristics of a situation, instead of reproducing isolated, “ideal” movements out of context (Araújo et al., 2017; Seifert et al., 2017, 2019). During nurse education however, students often find themselves in isolated practice drills in which they practice a nursing skill based upon detailed protocols and/or explicit instructions by the lecturer. Following the ecological dynamics framework (Button et al., 2021), we argue that there is no single ideal way of executing a certain task. In clinical practice, there are often more than one appropriate task executions for a certain situation, and on the other hand, a certain task execution might be effective in one situation, but less effective in another. As all patients and contexts contain unique characteristics, students need to practice with representative characteristics from clinical practice, so that they learn attuning to contextual information, instead of simply following step-by-step instructions (Fajen et al., 2009; Pinder et al., 2011; Wulf and Lewthwaite, 2016).
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