The Canadian Art Therapy Association Journal has produced a special issue called Art Therapy and Environment. In this issue environment is defined broadly and includes compelling and thought provoking articles from Canadian and international art therapists and allied professionals.

Read my Editorial 

Articles

Art Therapy Caves: Linking Community Art to a Therapeutic Space  by Cora H. McLachlan

Global Action Art Therapy: Cross-Cultural Experiences in South Korea by Seung Yeon Lee

Garden as Canvas: Therapeutic Metaphors in a Children’s Garden by Carol Knibbe & Petrea Hansen-Adamidis

A Natural Response to a Natural Disaster: The Art of Crisis in Nepal by Jess Linton

The Flowers of Compassion: A Trauma-Informed Artistic Event Involving Three Generations of Slovenians by Katarina Kompan Erzar

Access the Canadian Art Therapy Association Journal

Public Relations: Art and Social Enactment is the title of a seminar at the National College of Art and Design, Department of Visual Culture. Participatory arts, co-production, and activism will feature in this seminar that examines the potential of art that seeks relationships with others. Through artistic collectivity, partnerships and collaborations with the general public, there emerges a sense of social enterprise that makes art happen out-in-the-open and in relation to social contexts and the diverse experience of participants.

Public Relations is also the title of a series of blog posts that will accompany course participants as they develop team-led projects enacting theories and practices of collectivity in the production of art for the people.

Terms of Reference/Participatory Arts, Community Arts, Socially Engaged Arts, Activist Arts, Interventionist Arts, Social Practice, Guerrilla and Street Arts, Collaborations and Co-Productions

Public Relations = Actions promoting the creation of goodwill.

A Celtic Journey: The Spirit of Nature is an environmental challenge for primary school students to design a community garden based on their interpretation of a Celtic garden. The reference book for this project is The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture our Land and Ourselves by inspiring Irish garden designer and Chelsea gold winner Mary Reynolds who declares that ‘we need a green-fingered revolution to bring nature back into the garden’.

Mother Earth Print from the Garden Awakening by Ruth Evans

Either Way, Make a Move

School of Arts Education and Movement
Dublin City University, Institute of Education

The classroom as a happening is about animated learning. A situation is created whereby students re-define their educational surroundings. It is subject to flexibility. Art in this sense is related to environment, an atmosphere, and a studio of ideas. Happenings were first introduced by the artist Allan Kaprow. They are experiences where art, physical action, sound, words and environment are assembled within a specific time frame to promote participation and improvisation.

Classroom as Art Studio
Teaching as Performance
Teacher and Students as Artist Collective
Social Choreography in School
Students as Curators
Education as a Happening

A fim about older men taking to the street with stories from now and then.

There is graffiti.

The making of scenes.

Social Movements.

Declarations by word and song.

Anti-Stereotypical Behaviour.

Opinions.

These are Dundalk stories.

A town like any other town in Ireland, but different.

An Táin Arts Centre is supporting the production of What of It? in collaboration with the Dundalk Men’s Shed, film maker Steven Larkin, graffiti artist Barry Finnegan, performance poet Jinx Lennon, composer Patrick Connolly and Pamela Whitaker of Groundswell.

A mental health event at Creative Spark, that was part of First Fortnight 2017. The First Fortnight Festival “is a space in the cultural calendar where citizens can be inspired through arts events and experiences to talk about mental health issues in a non-scripted manner” (www.firstfortnight.ie)

Words That Move Us was a path of movement inspired by metaphors and idioms related to resolutions for the new year. Participants walked a route of messages that related to purpose and determination. Their line of passage incorporated objects and actions that set up a pathway of intention with the goal of trying something different.

The well factor of the arts.

An Táin Arts Centre and Droichead Arts Centre showcased art, music, poetry and theatre events in recognition of World Mental Health Day.

Participants included Quintessence Theatre, Dundalk Youth Centre, Music Generation, Spoken Word Dundalk, Creative Spark, Pangur Ban Productions, Groundswell, and environmental artist Úna Curley.

Groundswell presented a workshop called Antidotes: Tonics and Energies for Mind and Body. These existential remedies promoted vitality and determination for a variety of conditions—uncertainty, fatigue, disheartenment and disillusionment.

Vickey Curtis is a spoken word artist. Her performance A Rose By Any Other Name spoke the language of street harassment in the course of a walk from the Spire to Rathmines in Dublin. Read a witnessing of her performance that was part of the Dublin Live Art Festival 2016 in:Action/Irish Live Art Review.

Along the Walking Route, A Rose by Any Other Name by Vickey Curtis, Dublin Live Art Festival, August 14, 2016. Photograph by Blue Print Photography.