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)
Related papers
Women's wellbeing through creative arts and spiritual practice
In this research, I have sought to explore how and why women engaged in creative and spiritual practices to gain meaning and empowerment in their lives. I explore questions of why women’s creative practices have been considered less than, but move on from this to ask: How do women engaged in their creative practice within their own communities? and How does this influence their sense of wellbeing? The research questions how women might live in this world to thrive and flourish without feeling soulless, cut off from cultural traditions, identities and belonging or use self-nurturing practices such as sharing their stories, healing practices and women’s wisdom as a storehouse of empowerment.
Abstract: “Art and the spiritual have an ancient connection; however articulation of how the making of art can instigate a spiritual experience, influence artistic practice and effect change in women’s lives has not been well articulated. This paper focuses on the way contemporary women use art in their search for deepened understanding of inner self, belonging and as a way to connect to a ‘divine energy’ that helps them cope with challenges and experience joy. Based on the analysis of sixty three women’s artworks and stories from an art and spiritual festival and interviews with ten women artists, I articulate the complexities of the relationship between art making and the divine through women’s lived and embodied experiences of the art making process. Through this research I found that women while in the process of making art experienced a connection with a divine energy that inspired their artworks, gave them a sense of connectedness and was central to their sense of wellbeing” for the you tube presentation go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mvaDAmUv1M
2014
Pressures of globalisation such as the focus on the growth of productive economies, consumerism, and long work-hours have fragmented cultural beliefs and practices worldwide. Devaluation of deeply held soulful, creative, and nature-based practices in the dominant neoliberal capitalist discourse has challenged the way cultural and spiritual wellbeing are lived. Instead of being completely subsumed into the neoliberal global discourse, local responses incorporating global themes are emerging in the form of the “neo-tribal” festival experience. Although festivals have primarily been seen as places of consumption, this misunderstands the drive to participate in a festival experience. This article investigates a women’s arts and ecology festival held in The Blue Mountains, Australia, where members of the local community celebrate the return of spring. Findings suggest that this festival was a site for reclaiming a localized sense of connectedness, where participants reclaimed what was...
A model and theory of community-based arts and health practice
2013
This thesis is an ethnographic study of the dynamic world of a hidden arts and health practice. Throughout the UK, and internationally, artists are engaged to work collaboratively with community groups, in creative initiatives seeking positive outcomes for participants' health and wellbeing. Their practice is informal in character, with no unified identity or agreed parameters; instead responsive individuality in methods, manifest in the idiosyncratic creative voices of practitioners, is much celebrated. However elusive, improvised or plan-resistant the mechanisms behind the work, such projects continue to be resourced, constituting a paradoxically unregulated phenomenon in a customarily risk-averse health and care context.
Art in Culturally Sensitive Therapies
This capstone, Art in Culturally Sensitive Therapies, investigates the efficacy of art therapy as a resource to work with diversity, and argues that art therapy is useful as a way to bridge communication and relieve acculturation stressors.
2023
This article presents some of the key findings of the author's doctoral art-based research Seeing Her Stories: An Art-Based Inquiry (van Laar, 2020b), in which she worked with a group of women participants to investigate what can happen when we share our stories through art. In particular, she focuses on how listening deeply to participants revealed the ways in which sharing our stories through art was life enhancing and why this is important in the current changing context of Australia's mental health service system. Acknowledgement I live, work, and have written this article in Boon Wurrung Country on the unceded lands of the Yallock Bulluk people, to whom I pay my deepest respects. I am conscious of the rich and strong life-enhancing traditions of arts, culture, caring, and healing practices that pulse through this living and ever-changing environment and its people, and I welcome the influence this Country has on me when I pay attention. Foreword Boon Wurrung Elder and language specialist, Aunty Fay Stewart-Muir, teaches that, in traditional Boon Wurrung language, "yana-bul ngarnga-dha" means "you are hearing/listening". She says, "This is very important when the Elders are passing on knowledge to children. If you don't listen you miss part of the story and it won't be repeated" (Stewart-Muir, 2022). As a researcher, I am inspired by the Indigenous healing practice of deep listening, which includes listening with more than our ears and being changed by the experience of listening (Atkinson, 2002; Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, 2021). It is with the intention of cultivating my capacity for deep listening that I draw attention to the experiences given voice by co-inquirers in my research and seek to deepen my own understandings through listening deeply and carefully to what they told me. Dr. Carla van Laar is an Australian born woman of European/Nordic heritage, artist, and art therapist, who lives and works in Boon Wurrung Country in Inverloch, South East Gippsland. With over 30 years' experience working in the arts for health and well-being in community organisations, justice, health, and education contexts, Carla is driven by a belief that the values underpinning arts-based practice are essential for healing our troubled world. She has authored two books and multiple articles. Carla currently works with families affected by violence and provides online supervision for practitioners around Australia. She regularly gets involved in creative projects that ignite her interest. Carla is the Founding Director of the Creative Mental Health Forum and Self Care Retreat, lead campaigner in the ACTivate Arts Therapy campaign, and Convenor of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA)'s College of Creative and Experiential Therapies.
2007
Design and Layout by Arts for Health Team Cover Design by Grace Jackson Photographs by Invest to Save Projects and Research Team Arts for Health Manchester Metropolitan University Elizabeth Gaskell Campus Hathersage Road Manchester M13 0JA Telephone 0161 247 1094 / 4656 Email c.parkinson@mmu.ac.uk or a.kilroy@mmu.ac.uk recognising the importance of the things that happen outside clinical environments and that impact on public health, specifically within our communities. During the same period of policy change, Sir Nigel Crisp, then Chief Executive of the NHS, put out a call to the arts community, for evidence of the relationship and relevance of culture and the arts to the NHS. A significant outcome of this interest has been the publication of joint Department of Health and Arts Council England national strategic frameworks.
Communicating Health and Healing through Art
Storied Health and Illness, 2017
The possibilities surrounding reorientating to difference and healing that is based on aesthetic rather than technical logics are explored in relation to sheltered workshops. Artists' creative use of various communicative modalities provides alternatives for managing emotions, uncertainties, and provider-patient interactions.