Mackay. K. L. (2016). The SPICES Art Framework: A Practitioner Tool for Deepening Understandings of Cultural and Spiritual Wellbeing.The International Journal of Social, Political and Community Agendas in the Arts, Volume 11, Issue 1, pp.15-32. (original) (raw)

Wellbeing is commonly used to describe a person’s mental, physical, emotional and affective states of wellbeing but still often neglects the cultural and spiritual context of anindividual’s sense of wellbeing. This study uses data from sixty women’s stories and artworks exhibited at The 2009 Women’s Room Ancestral Connections Exhibitionexamining how approaches to art making influenced cultural and spiritual wellbeing infive groups affiliated with The Women’s Room. Arts based narrative analysis, in-depthinterviews and ethnographic observation were used to determine women’s approaches toart making and a new arts analysis tool called The SPICES framework was developed inthe course of research as there were no suitable frameworks to analyse the cultural and spiritual intent of stories and artworks. The study found that women primarily used threeapproaches to making their art being 1) Spiritual approach, 2) Intuitive Channeled approach and 3) Expressive Symbolic approach (SPICES framework). These findingssuggest that making art using a SPICES approach enabled a creative agency for theexpression of cultural and spiritual beliefs, a communicative action strategy which bothchallenged dominant cultural conceptions of societal roles, and assisted women to copewith the challenges of everyday life. The SPICES approach will facilitate deepened understandings of transpersonal art produced in community art contexts, art therapy or cultural arts practice. Implications for policy makers, practitioners and researcherssuggests the need to develop more sophisticated understandings of the cultural and spiritual meanings behind the art being made in diverse community settings as this willshed light on how cultural beliefs and practices influence health and wellbeing, leading to better understandings of client community needs and perspectives.