Art teacher and Psychology Masters Student interested in Art therapy research

Hi! I'm in my third module of my psychology conversion masters and I've decided my route leads me towards working with art therapy in the future. I've been a practice artist most of my life, and art teacher for over 2 years and discovered my passion for psychology through my own mental health journey. I'm excited to see where this road leads 😁.

For my master's thesis I'm going to be focusing on the benefits of community art classes for mental health outcomes. I'm specifically interested in looking for evidence of flow state during a class and why sharing that experience with others is important for the groups I work with in the community. It's all abit loose ATM but slowing becoming a tighter research question. Any knowledge in the topics of flow state in art or benefits of community based art wellbeing groups would be appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing any thoughts 😁

3 comments

Comments (3)

Unknown member

Jul 02

Hello, Caz!

Thank you so much for joining us on our website and contributing to our Discussion Board. We certainly appreciate your interest in art therapy and the potential partnership with art education. As you know although these two professions are related they are indeed different in theory and practice. Art therapists focus on understanding the underlying and often unconscious. dynamics and relational discourse of the individual, group, community and culture to formulate the approaches that will inform engagement, insight, and transformation. With that said, there has been a growing body of literature that is researching and implementing practices at the community level. Recently one of our colleagues, Emily. Nolan published a book on Community Art Therapy https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003193289/community-art-therapy-emily-goldstein-nolan.

There are additional sources in the literature as well by Cathy Moon, Megan Robb and Rand Vick among others. It might be interesting to compare and contrast the art therapy and art education perspectives and implementation strategies for community arts. We wish you the best of luck with your project. Keep us posted!

Kind regards,

Nancy Gerber

Edited

Unknown member

Jul 02

Replying to

Hi Caz,

Yes the Marian Liebman book is good. There is a more recent book by Megan Robb called Group Art Therapy which you might find useful as well particularly relative tod community based approaches.

Good luck!

Nancy