Art Therapy Education: Embracing a Perpetually Changing World (Éducation en art-thérapie : s’adapter à un monde en perpétuel changement)

Over the past few years, growing evidence has sparked movements toward international acceptance of the healing potentials of arts (Czamanski-Cohen, 2021; Karkou et al., 2022). The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Evidence Network Synthesis Report reviewed over 900 publications (Fancourt & Finn, 2019) and concluded that:

… the arts can help people experiencing mental illness, support care for people with acute conditions; help to support people with neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders; assist with the management of noncommunicable diseases; and support end-of-life care. (p. viii)

This rising awareness has sparked WHO, as the leading authority on global health, to develop an arts and health program that champions research, promotes knowledge, and organizes events around the arts that support health. This significant venture will also raise awareness of the efficacy of art therapy among diverse sets of populations (Karkou et al., 2022). The growing body of evidence coupled with social and physical changes within our learning spheres, and increased access to digital education, have propelled art therapy education to adapt.

Spanning from a breadth of historical and contemporary publications, art therapy educators agree that our profession must continuously reexamine educational and pedagogical practices and standards in light of new knowledge, emerging technologies, calls for increased diversity and reflection, standardization, and the needs of modern contexts (Feen-Calligan, 1996; Kapitan, 2012; Lay, 2021; Malchiodi, 1996; Potash, 2021). Educational institutions and educators must question how to prepare students for the 21^st century, as the predominant standardized machine bureaucracy model of education has become increasingly obsolete (Kelly, 2020). Massive and rapid changes to social, environmental, and health contexts may make altering existing educational models to current experiences futile. It may now be prudent to begin envisioning hopes for the future of the practice, as opposed to gearing existing education toward current contexts. More innovative, collaborative, inclusive, sustainable, and creative models are increasingly needed beyond didactic and industrial-era models and pedagogies (Kelly, 2020).

In 2021, the academic journal titled Art Therapy published a special issue on education that explores, examines, and critiques art therapy training with contemporary perspectives because training provides the “foundation for securing a profession” (Potash, 2021, p. 4). The issue explored meaningful topics such as: signature pedagogies of art therapy (Leigh, 2021), professional identity development of art therapy students (Jue & Ha, 2021), assessments (Franklin, 2021), in addition to centralizing voices of students of color in learning spaces (Johnson et al., 2021). The recent issue extends previous and historical Art Therapy journal subject matters exploring art therapy education, published by Kapitan (2012) and Malchiodi (1996).

Volume 35, Issue 1, of the Canadian Journal of Art Therapy: Research, Practice, and Issues/Revue canadienne d’art-thérapie : recherche, pratique et enjeux presents the theme of art therapy education in a broad sense—beyond postgraduate and graduate education, to include continuing education, educating colleagues about art therapy, and innovating on new methods with diverse populations, etc. This special issue welcomed submissions with various research methodologies that addressed trends, movements, and new programming that aligned learning with the current needs of populations in the field. The intention of this issue is to present different ways that art therapy education can enhance and move the field forward.

Environmental influences on art therapy education

The recent COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed society and norms. As we changed behavioral patterns and routines, the pandemic catalyzed art therapy professionals, researchers, and educators to assess and adapt practices based on physical safety measures making online learning a “new normal” (Elshami et al., 2021, p. 1). Virtual art therapy publications have since emerged to share new advances, strengths, and challenges with virtual and digital adaptations (Winkel, 2022). Canadian postsecondary educational institutions postponed in-person learning and quickly modified courses to synchronous and asynchronous virtual platforms as integration of digital technologies have become increasingly common in the field (Zubala et al., 2021).

As an educator and Ph.D. candidate, I had to let go of the confines of a physical safe haven of an art therapy educational space, particularly the tangible and physical space of a studio environment. Art studios within art therapy education are considered meaningful spaces for personal, artistic, and academic discovery during art therapy training (Leigh, 2021). Art therapy education is unique in the way it centralizes experiential, tacit, dialectic, collective, and reflexive learning practices within shared studio spaces (Gerber, 2016; Leigh, 2021). Indeed, Jue & Ha’s (2021) survey research found that by practicing art making, graduate students develop their professional art therapist identities and feel committed to their careers. Embracing virtual learning platforms changed the nature of education within art therapy to include more home art studio environments, where the liminal space of an art studio is transitioned to the home (Whitaker & McHugh, 2021).

Embracing virtual learning can include challenges and benefits for faculty and students alike. In the general health sciences, 370 postsecondary students and 81 faculty members reported satisfaction with the flexibility and communication capacities of online platforms (Elshami et al., 2021). Surveyed participants also reported challenges, including heightened study and workload capacity issues, disengagement, and technical difficulties. It would be helpful to target a survey for students from the art therapy field to assess their satisfaction and particular challenges related to online learning.

Rebuilding place attachments within education

Environmental psychologists and researchers Counted et al. (2021a; 2021b) theorized that physical separations from meaningful places and people within spaces during the pandemic resulted in disruptions in place attachment¹ (p. 37). The authors share that “disruption in people-place relationships has heightened our sense of awareness about the extent to which human life is inextricably tethered to places” (Counted et al., 2021a, p. 1). Consequently, our relationship with environments, including spaces of learning, has been interrupted, resulting in loss, stress, and psychological (in addition to physical) isolation.

Moreover, sudden and substantial changes can affect both students and faculty emotionally and psychologically. Postsecondary faculty members Assif and colleagues (2022) describe their response to the pandemic and move to virtual learning with the following undertakings:

We attended dozens of training workshops, learned entire suites of new platforms and programs, reviewed our professional priorities, embraced and applied pedagogical practices of care and love towards our students and their learning, and built and fostered online communities of practice – often in the midst of our own individual and family struggles, and at the expense of our own mental health and wellbeing. (para. 1)

Assif and colleagues (2022) share their experiences and the sacrifices they made when they lost the ability to facilitate embodied learning in the classroom. The narrative of adaptation and change resonated with me, as significant upheaval and rebalancing came along as a result of giving birth to three children during the pandemic and adapting to becoming a new mother. As the educators and students have now moved back to on-site learning in places that feel transformed by pandemic-related traumas, they assert the need to process, reflect back, and grieve the past losses to move forward (Assif et al., 2022). It is still unknown how and whether changes and resources developed during the pandemic will be integrated within postpandemic learning environments. Place-based attachment relationships will need to be compassionately rebuilt in education centers to ensure that they remain meaningful, engaging, safe, and inclusive during an eventual postpandemic era.

Contents

As new challenges in the field of art therapy develop, educational advances are required to provide improved strategies, curricula, theoretical frameworks, and pedagogical models to prepare practitioners (Gerber, 2016). This current issue explores art therapy education across the spectrum of education, including postsecondary education and continuing education. The publication also incorporates unconventional articles, focusing on two sections: Art Therapy in Practice and Soundings. The Art Therapy in Practice section describes new art therapy methods and tools in practice, while the Soundings section presents emerging, often arts-based, philosophical and theoretical perspectives.

Art therapy in practice

Based on over 10 years of experience leading a training program in South-East Asia, Lay (2021) provides narrative examples of collaborative and creative strategic scaffolding. Strategic scaffolding ensures that professional training integrates modern technological advances and collaborative cultural practices so that art therapy practices can remain sustainable and relevant within different contexts. With this form of training described by Lay (2021), art therapy students graduate with the appropriate competencies to thrive in diverse community, research, and multicultural environments. More importantly, strategic scaffolding programs would help students also develop the capacity to respond to new trends and changes once they graduate.

While working in large interdisciplinary organizations, art therapists can find it challenging to describe their scope of practice to colleagues from different health disciplines to advocate for the benefits of credentialed art therapists (Van Lith & Spooner, 2018). The inability to concretely describe components of art therapy practice with an evidence base may lead to misunderstandings about what art therapy can offer patients to support healing and well-being (Kwok et al., 2022). Art therapists would benefit from finding empirical ways to explain their scope of practice to colleagues and allies.

Kwok et al. argue for the improvement and standardization of art therapy documentation to advance the field within a multidisciplinary environment. The authors believe that “[t]he validation of core art therapy structures and processes represents an opportunity to infuse our programs with greater accountability and marketability” (p. 17). This interdisciplinary team of authors and practitioners describe the development of a standardized progress note tool developed to educate allies and colleagues about art therapy scope of practice at the Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in New York.

Detailed case reports from practicing art therapists can serve as “a first line of evidence” when presenting emerging ideas and interventions (Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, 2019, para. 2). This form of methodology, featured in the Art Therapy in Practice section, enables practitioners to accessibly educate other practitioners using on-the-ground clinical cases. Dansky’s (2022) case report presents a resourceful use of the small body outline drawing (SBOD) to treat and support a woman diagnosed with alcohol and stimulant use disorder within a residential substance use program. The author and art therapist presents the clinical context, goals of the SBOD, how the intervention was administered, and concrete verbal and artistic responses from a particular patient.

Soundings

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are fundamental to the development of art therapy, a field that integrates diverse perspectives and paradigms (Bucciarelli, 2016; Chilton et al., 2015). Collaborating with faculty from other fields enables art therapist researchers and educators to embrace and learn new perspectives, approaches, theories, ontologies, and artistic approaches. Whitaker and McHugh’s (2021) theoretical article, published in the Soundings section of the journal, provides an example of creative collaboration between art therapy and ceramics disciplines at Ulster University and the Belfast School of Art. As homes and education spaces become increasingly blurred with virtual learning (Carpendale & Toll, 2021; Howlett, 2021), Whitaker and McHugh (2021) highlight the transformative value of perceiving households as art studios and galleries that reflect psychological and artistic identities through personal possessions. Whitaker & McHugh describe the home studio as:

… inherently our refuge where we have our life’s materials at hand. It should contain traditions of coping and thriving, and it is the place of our knowledge creation. The home studio, as part of art therapy education, supports discovering what we are looking for in the “already there.” (Whitaker & McHugh, 2021, p. 35)

Material culture is presented as an art therapy signature pedagogy at Ulster University because of the dialectic nature of physical mediums in informing individual, cultural, historical, and societal psychological realities. By sharing curated assemblages of found objects from their homes, the authors present ways to actively process loss through commemoration. The authors provide reflexive artistic examples of how material culture can add value to art therapy training programs, particularly with online distance learning during isolating moments in the COVID-19 period.

Book review

Naomi Kates’ (2022) review of Junge’s (2019) book titled, An Art Therapist’s View of Mass Murders, Violence, and Mental Illness: Practical Suggestions for Helping Practitioners Find Support and Guidance in a Dangerous Practice, highlights the helpfulness of the book for practitioners working in the justice system regarding inmates convicted of violent crimes. Clinical supervision can provide ethical safeguards and mentorship for art therapists across the span of their career. Continuing education and mentorship is particularly helpful for new art therapists and for those who are working with populations who have complex backgrounds and may be convicted of violent crimes, such as within criminal justice systems.

Further pursuits in art therapy education: Embracing growth, accountability, and adapting to perpetual change

Art therapist Czamanski-Cohen (2021) declares, I think our time has come, in her Editorial title for the International Journal of Art Therapy (p. 123). “Our time” refers to the potential of art therapists to flourish because of increased global acceptance and the growing base of evidence for the value of art therapy under the wider arts in health umbrella. As the profession develops to meet the diverse “needs of the individuals we work with, in an ever-changing world” (p. 123), so too must art therapy education within both formal and informal spheres. Summarizing the contents of this art therapy education issue, I am left with enthusiasm about how the topic of art therapy education can continue to be explored. More research and examinations are needed to further understand how art therapy’s ontological and epistemological perspectives translate into how we teach and learn the profession as our world continues to change and the need for our services grows. For example, narrative and arts-based research, among traditional survey research, could assess the profound impacts of how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed learning practices and trajectories of students and faculty. Moving forward, it will be meaningful to uncover how communities and individuals begin to recover and redevelop positive relationships with art therapy training spaces once (or if) the pandemic subsides (Counted et al., 2021a)

Extending Johnson and colleagues’ (2021) writing, critical examinations that explore ways in which art therapy education can emphasize and promote diverse and inclusive learning environments must be expanded upon. Educational pedagogies must centralize the integral voices of people of color and Indigenous perspectives within core content, and systemic barriers to access and complete art therapy education should be further addressed (Johnson et al., 2021). As a country with over 60 distinct Indigenous languages (Canadian Heritage, 2017) in addition to English and French, art therapy is taught in a multitude of training programs and universities across the Canada. The impact of language on art therapy educational experiences, from both faculty and students, would be a significant topic to study. On a practical level, art therapist and educator, Leigh (2021), recommends that art therapy learners and educators develop a collaborative “community of practice of art therapy educators” where research could be synergistically conducted based on a “common sense of purpose and a shared knowledge base” (p. 10; Kapitan, 2018).

Collective wisdom gained over the past few years points to just how quickly our worlds and environments can change with new technologies, research findings, and during an international health crisis. As I write this editorial, I was struck with the unpredictability of prolonged electricity loss and environmental damage during a sudden spring storm that ripped through Ottawa (DeClerq, 2022). Understanding how rapidly and consistently changes occur, educational practices in any field must be consistently and fearlessly questioned, critiqued, and re-envisioned while embracing meaningful fundamentals (Kelly, 2020). The hope is that new and continued learners become empowered to adapt to an incessantly changing world and continue to transform the profession to meet new needs. Our authors in Volume 35, Issue 1, present such innovative thoughts and interventions with courage and an enthusiasm to experiment and share discoveries.

Haley Toll, PhD Cand., CCC, RCAT, RP (inactive)
Canadian Journal of Art Therapy: Research, Practice,and Issues Editor-in-ChiefMemorial University of Newfoundland,Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
[email protected] 2022 Canadian Art Therapy Association

Correction Statement

This editorial has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 “Place attachment” is a term that applies Bowlby’s (1969) attachment theory to people’s emotional relationships with their environments within the field of environmental psychology (Giuliani, 2003). Significant and meaningful environments are considered similar to an important internalized attachment object (Counted et al., 2021a).