Using creative modalities to resist discourses of individualization and blame in social work education

ABSTRACT

In this article, we analyze the individualizing discourses of markets, consumers and choice, in relation to the marketization of care services in an Australian context. As many have highlighted, critical social work practice and education are increasingly marginalized. Institutions and organizations have become focused on producing social work graduates who can adapt to a neoliberalised environment, rather than critically engage with service users and communities to challenge structural inequality. We suggest that creative modalities, coupled with critical reflection and critical sociology in curriculum, offer a means through which students, educators, and service users can challenge reductionist, individualizing and limiting discourses, and enable stronger understanding of the lived experience of marginalized people and communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative modalities
• art therapy
• marketization
• social work
• social policy
• individualization

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although the program has therapeutic dimensions, the research does not make a neo-colonial pathologising claim about the provision of art therapy to Indigenous participants and communities. Instead, this term enables the distinction between general and purposeful art making.

2. Although the common definition of yarning is a cultural protocol of conversation, Art-Yarning refers to a far deeper form of integration, which is based on the philosophy of the Relational common to both Indigenous knowledge systems and art therapy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick O’Keeffe

Patrick O’Keeffe studies processes of marketisation and responsibilisation in Australian social policy, within the RMIT Social and Global Studies Centre.

Elinor Assoulin

Dr Elinor Assoulin is an art psychotherapist and academic whose interest lies in the intersection between art, race, identity and visual pathways for expression, communication and research.