quantitative research paper about arts

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• My Account Login
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 11 December 2014

Large-Scale Quantitative Analysis of Painting Arts

• Daniel Kim 1 ,
• Seung-Woo Son 2 &
• Hawoong Jeong 3 , 4  

Scientific Reports volume  4 , Article number:  7370 ( 2014 ) Cite this article

22k Accesses

47 Citations

64 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Scientific data

Scientists have made efforts to understand the beauty of painting art in their own languages. As digital image acquisition of painting arts has made rapid progress, researchers have come to a point where it is possible to perform statistical analysis of a large-scale database of artistic paints to make a bridge between art and science. Using digital image processing techniques, we investigate three quantitative measures of images – the usage of individual colors, the variety of colors and the roughness of the brightness. We found a difference in color usage between classical paintings and photographs and a significantly low color variety of the medieval period. Interestingly, moreover, the increment of roughness exponent as painting techniques such as chiaroscuro and sfumato have advanced is consistent with historical circumstances.

Similar content being viewed by others

A vision chip with complementary pathways for open-world sensing

The environmental price of fast fashion

The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans

Introduction.

Humans have expressed physical experiences and abstract ideas in artistic paintings such as cave paintings, frescos in cathedrals and even graffiti on city walls. Such paintings, to convey intended messages, consist of three fundamental building blocks: points, lines and planes. Recent studies have shed light on interesting mathematical patterns between these building blocks in paintings.

Artistic styles were analyzed through various statistical techniques such as fractal analysis 1 , the wavelet-based technique 2 , the multi-resolution hidden Markov method 3 , the Fisher kernel based approach 4 and the sparse coding model 5 , 6 . Recently, these methods have also been applied to other cultural heritages such as literature 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 and music 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 . Such quantitative analysis is called “stylometry,” which originates from literature analysis to identify characteristic literary style 9 .

In this study, we add a new dimension to the body of stylometry studies by analyzing a large-scale database of artistic paintings. With digital image processing techniques we quantify the change in variety of painted colors and their spatial structures over ten historical periods of western paintings – medieval, early renaissance, northern renaissance, high renaissance, mannerism, baroque, rococo, neoclassicism, romanticism and realism – starting from the 11th century to the mid-19th century. Digital images of the paintings were obtained from the Web Gallery of Art 15 , which is a searchable database for European paintings and sculptures consisting of over 29,000 pieces ranging from the years 1000 to 1850. Most of the identifiable images contain information of schools, periods and artists and are good quality in resolution to apply statistical analysis.

Here we focus on the following three quantities – the usage of each color, variety of painted colors and the roughness of the brightness of images. First, we count how often a certain color appears in a painting for each period. From the frequency histogram, we find a clear difference between classical paintings and photographs. Next, we measure a fractal dimension of painted colors for each period in a color space, which is analogically considered to reflect the color ‘palette’ of that period. Interestingly, the fractal dimension of the medieval period is lower than that of other periods. The detailed results and our inference are discussed in this section. Last, we consider how rough or smooth an image is in the sense of its brightness. In order to quantify roughness of brightness, a well-known roughness exponent measurement in statistical physics is applied. We find that the roughness exponent increases gradually over the 10 periods, which is consistent with the historical circumstances like the birth of the new painting techniques such as chiaroscuro and sfumato 16 , 17 ( Chiaroscuro and sfumato are major painting techniques developed and widely used during the Renaissance period. Literally, the compound word chiaroscuro is formed from the Italian words chiaro (light) and oscuro (dark), which refers to an artistic technique to delineate tonal contrasts and voluminous objects with a dramatic use of light. Precursors of chiaroscuro are Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) is a representative artist well-known for his use of chiaroscuro . The Italian word sfumato is derived from the Italian term fumo which literally means “smoke”. Leonardo da Vinci mentioned sfumato as a blending of colors without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane. In other words, sfumato is a painting technique to express gradual fade-out between object and background avoiding harsh outlines.). Analyzing these three properties, we propose new approaches to quantitatively analyze a large scale database of paintings. Applying our method to the controversial Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, it is possible to infer that his drip paintings are quite different from works of other painters.

Chromo-spectroscopy

First we investigate how many different kinds of color appear in a painting and how often a certain color is painted, which is similar to Zipf's plot for word frequencies in literature 18 . It is named as “chromo-spectroscopy.” A color is considered to be like a word for a painter. As an example of chromo-spectroscopy, Fig. 1a displays the fraction of each color used in a painting in descending rank order. If each color is chosen from a palette uniformly at random, the frequency of each color would follow a binomial distribution for a random process (see more detail in the supplement ) and its rank plot would show an inverse of its cumulative, i.e., the regularized incomplete beta function 19 . This is because the rank plot is the inverse of its cumulative density function (see black dots in Fig. 1a ). However, interestingly, the rank-ordered color-usage distribution (RCD) shows a long tail distribution, which is different from the inverse function of the regularized incomplete beta function (see Fig. 1a ).

Rank-ordered color-usage distributions for an image and periods.

(a) Fraction distribution of each color in a descending rank order for the art work of German painter Johann Erdmann Hummel (1769-1852), “Schloss Wilhelmshöhe with the Habichtswald” (This image is out of copyright.). The horizontal axis indicates the rank of a color in frequency and the vertical axis denotes the proportion of a color in an image. The most (least) used color is located at the leftmost (rightmost) position on the horizontal axis. The black dots represent color choices from the same palette uniformly at random. (b) Rank-ordered color-usage distributions (RCDs) of the 10 periods and photographs. Note that the distribution of photographs clearly shows a different tail. Inset: RCD for the neoclassicism period. The displayed color corresponds to its rank. Note that the fraction is normalized by the image size and the number of paintings in each period.

Figure 1b shows RCDs for 10 periods of European art history and photographs. The RCD of a period represents how many colors are used and how often a specific color appears during the period. All periods of painting show a universal distribution curve, but the rank of each color for each period is rather different. The RCD of photographs is similar to that of paintings at the beginning of a power-law part but the exponential tail deviates significantly from paintings, as shown in Fig. 1b . In order to clarify the difference of the tail section of RCDs between paintings and photographs, we analyze RCDs of images of photographs after applying several painting filters from popular software. There are clear changes in the tail of the distribution when only the oil painting filter is applied. An oil painting filter usually consists of two parameters – range and level – which are related to the size of an art paint brush and smearing intensity. It seems these two parameters influence the shape of the exponential tail of the RCD. Another interesting fact is that there is no clear difference between RCDs of photographs and hyper-realism paintings, which are extremely finely drawn with microscope and are hard to distinguish from photographs with unaided eyes (see Figure S4b in the supplement ). This suggests that paintings are only quantitatively distinguished from photographs by the tail section of the RCD. The tail of RCD represents frequency of noisy colors or a level of details in the image.

Fractal pattern and color palette

RCDs for all periods of paintings show quite universal distribution curves. However, the most commonly painted color is different for each period. To characterize the variety of colors more quantitatively, while ignoring its individual frequency, we investigate the fractal pattern of the painted color in the RGB color space for each period.

To examine the fractal characteristics of painted colors for each period, we measure the box-counting dimension 20 of the paintings in the RGB color space and compare them with two iconoclastic artists: Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Jackson Pollock. Each color used in the painting is plotted on a point in the RGB color space. Based on the definition of the box-counting dimension, we iteratively change the length of box ε from ε = 1 to ε = 32 and count the number of non-empty boxes. A non-empty box indicates that corresponding colors within the box are used in the painting at least once. If the distribution of colors in the color space is homogeneous, the box counting dimension is 3. In other words, if the box counting dimension is less than 3, the distributions in the color space is heterogeneous and fractal, which means some axes are preferred or the distribution is composed of a preferred color scheme in the color space. In this sense, measuring the box-counting dimension quantifies the spatial uniformity or fractality of painted colors for each artistic period.

Figure 2a shows that the box-counting dimensions of paintings from the 10 historic periods are in the range between 2.6 and 2.8 except for the medieval period. As Fig. 2b shows, only the box-counting dimension of the medieval period is close to that of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings (below 2.4), where he used limited colors intentionally. In addition, the box counting dimension for the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder is approximately 2.55. A low box-counting dimension represents that there is a strong preference in a small number of selected colors in the medieval age. That is, the color palette in the medieval age is significantly different from the other periods.

Box-counting dimension and its tendency.

(a) The results of box-counting dimension over the 10 artistic periods display a significant difference of the medieval period from the other periods. Error bars indicate the standard deviation. (b) The number of boxes to cover the color space versus box size. The fractal dimension in the color space of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings is measured around 2.35, similar to that of medieval paintings (see also Figure S5 in the supplement ), but dissimilar to that of another iconoclastic artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

One can find the reason why the box counting dimensions for the medieval age and Jackson Pollock are different from others in the historical facts. First, specific rare pigments were preferred for political purposes and religious reasons in the medieval age despite their expensive cost. Second, no technique of physical mixing between different pure colors was used in that period due to the tendency to emphasize the purity of colors and materials themselves. Artists recoated on a colored canvas to represent various colors in the middle age. The drip paintings of Jackson Pollock are also formed from recoating each single color dripping pattern on other layers and the number of used colors is smaller than other western paintings before 20 th century. Furthermore, oil colors and color mixing techniques were not fully developed until the Renaissance age. The introduction of new expression tools, like pastels and fingers and painting techniques, such as chiaroscuro and sfumato , made much more colorful and natural expressions possible after the Renaissance period 21 . The difference of fractal dimensions between the medieval and other periods quantitatively may quantitatively reflect the historical facts and the painting technical difference in art history.

Spatial renormalization and fixed point analysis

In the RGB color space, each painting has its own set of scattered color pixels. In order to analyze the characteristics of color usages, considering the variety of color in the paintings, we define three representative points in the RGB color space. First, center of usage frequency in the color space may be compared to center of mass in physics. One can calculate center of usage frequency (CM) in the color space with the usage information and spatial position of colors such as the center of mass of physical objects. Second, iteratively resizing a painting is necessary to get the fixed point of the painting borrowed from real space renormalization concept in physics. Repeatedly resizing a painting, a painting eventually becomes one pixel. That is the fixed point of the painting (FP). The third fixed point of the randomized painting (SFP) is the same as mentioned in the second one except for shuffling the pixels of the painting. If the spatial information of the scattered color is irrelevant, FP and SFP would not be significantly different. Note that center of mass point of a shuffled image (SCM) is the same as the original CM. Then, two vectors d 1 ( d 2 ) pointing from CM to FP (SFP) can be compared to quantify the randomness of the spatial arrangement of the colors in paintings. If d 1 and d 2 are similar, the used colors in a painting are not diverse or the spatial arrangement of the colors in a painting is close to random. Figure 3c suggests that the color arrangement of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings is quite different from other paintings, showing that Pollock's art work is quite random, especially in the spatial arrangement of colors. On the other hand, the two fixed points of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's paintings are far away each other.

Spatial renormalization of original and shuffled images.

(a) An example of transforming an image into a fixed point. ( Figure 1a also contains the image which is out of copyright.) (b) An illustrative example of the center of mass (CM), the fixed point (FP) and the shuffled fixed point (SFP) in RGB color space. (c) Norm of difference of d 1 and d 2 over 10 periods and comparison with Pollock's drip paintings and Pieter Bruegel the Elder's paintings. (d) Norm of cross product of d 1 and d 2 over 10 periods and comparison with Pollock's drip paintings and Pieter Bruegel the Elder's paintings.

Surface roughness and brightness contrast

Though we mainly focus on the usage of colors, ignoring its spatial arrangement over the first two subsections, spatial correlation of colors is also important to understand the artistic style of the paintings, as shown in previous RG analysis, because a painting is a composition of colors in the proper place. The spatial arrangement of colors makes various artistic effects possible. For example, contrast, as one of the artistic effects, is an important element to express shape and space in two dimensional fine arts. Among various types of contrast, brightness contrast is the most important in art history due to the cultural background of Europe which usually adopts the contrast of light and darkness as a metaphorical expression. In this subsection, taking both the color information of pixels and their spatial arrangement into account, we examine the prevalence of brightness contrast in European paintings over 10 artistic periods.

To quantify brightness contrast, we utilize the two-point height difference correlation (HDC) and its roughness exponent α, the slope of HDC curve in a double logarithmic plot of the surface growth model in statistical physics 22 . First we get the brightness in grey-scale from the RGB color information through a weighted transformation (see Methods) and define a “brightness surface” of an image by adopting the brightness of a pixel as a height at that position of the image as shown in Fig. 4a and b . A three-dimensional surface, like a deep-pile carpet, is obtained from the 2-dimensional painting, where the HDC is calculated as a function of distance r . This method is widely used in condensed matter and statistical physics to analyze the roughness of a growing surface, for example a semiconductor surface grown by chemical deposition 22 . For comparison, a shuffled image, by changing a pixel's position randomly, is analyzed together.

Constructing brightness surfaces and measuring roughness exponents.

(a) and (b) Illustrative examples of brightness surfaces. The brightness of each point is considered as its height. (c) An example of a two-point HDC function G ( r ) on the brightness surface of an image in the inset, a panel painting of Italian painter Taddeo Gaddi (1348–1353) titled “St John the Evangelist Drinking from the Poisoned Cup” (This image is out of copyright.). The horizontal axis indicates the distance r , where a unit is a pixel, between two distinct points on the surface. Red points show the HDC of an original image and blue ones represent that of a randomized image. The slope is approximately 2α~0.28. (d) The HDC function for an image shown in the inset, painting of American painter Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) titled “Number 20, 1948, 1948” (This image is reproduced by permission of the Artists Rights Society and Society of Artist's Copyright of Korea, © 2014 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/ARS, NY - SACK, Seoul), showing no difference from a randomly shuffled image only except for short distance less than 10 pixels, which is less than 1% of the image width.

As shown in Fig. 4a and b , since the brightness of a point is defined as its height, the height difference between two points represents the brightness difference. The two-point HDC of a randomly shuffled painting is displayed in blue dots in Fig. 4c and d for comparison. The slope α for randomized images is 0 since there is no spatial correlation any more. Figure 4d shows an example of Jackson Pollock's drip painting, which is hard to distinguish from randomly shuffled painting when only the spatial correlation is considered. The roughness exponent of Jackson Pollock's drip painting is very small comparing to that of other European paintings.

Since HDC describes the spatial correlation between color pixels on a surface as a function of distance, the slope of the HDC function, i.e., the roughness exponent α, denotes the average brightness difference according to the contrast effect. Figure 5a shows that the roughness exponent α gradually increases over the 10 artistic periods, which is consistent with historical circumstances. First, the increasing tendency of α is related to changes in painting techniques and genres, such as from portraits to landscape. In the history of western art, many new painting techniques were developed and spread during the Renaissance period. For example, chiaroscuro , which is one of the canonical painting modes in the Renaissance period 16 , characterizes strong contrasts between light and shade. The roughness exponent and the HDC capture the level of brightness and relative spatial position. Hence, a roughness exponent α of a painting could be a quantitative indicator of a chiaroscuro technique and its increasing tendency over artistic periods reflects the spread of the chiaroscuro technique over the continent 21 . In addition, the Renaissance art movement led that painting genres became more diverse. Therefore, more portraits and landscape paintings were encouraged. Large objects in paintings such as a torso, i.e., the upper body of portraits, or mountains and sky in landscapes decrease the brightness difference in a short distance, but makes the increment of the HDC bigger as distance increases 21 . Therefore, the historical renovation of painting techniques and the diversification of painting genres are clearly captured in an increasing tendency of the roughness exponent α.

The trend of roughness exponents and image entropies.

(a) The trend of roughness exponents over 10 art historical periods shows increasing behavior. (b) Statistical tendency of image entropy values of brightness surfaces over the periods; error bars indicate the standard error of the mean.

Another example, sfumato is another major painting mode developed in the Renaissance period to express a vanishing or shading around objects in a painting 17 . Smoothing the edges of objects in a painting makes the variance of brightness decrease because it doesn't allow abrupt changes at the boundary. In this case, image entropy 23 would be a good measurement for the sfumato technique, which indicates the variance of brightness in a specific locale. Since the variance is inversely proportional to homogeneity, the image entropy describes the level of local homogeneity of brightness in a painting.

Figure 5b shows that the image entropy H increases up to Neoclassicism and then decreases, which is somewhat different from the roughness exponent since the image entropy only considers the complexity of the color gradient around a pixel locally comparing to the fact that the roughness exponent also consider the color brightness difference of remote distance. We think that the different behaviors of these two measures may reflect the tendency that the chiaroscuro technique is still developing but the sfumato declines. It may be rejecting mysterious expression and respecting the realistic one.

From the analysis of a large-scale European painting image archive, we display that chromo-spectroscopy of 10 art historical periods shows a universal distribution curve which distinguishes art paintings from photographs. Additionally, fractal analysis allows us to rediscover the expansion of the color palette after the medieval period, which is consistent with the fact that the color palette of the medieval age was relatively narrow comparing to other periods because of historical circumstances. Furthermore, we measure the roughness exponent and image entropy of brightness surfaces over the 10 art historical periods. We find that these mathematical measurements quantitatively describe the birth of new painting techniques and their increasing use. Our approaches successfully provide quantitative indicators reflecting historical developments of artistic styles. Applying them, it is possible to deduce that the Jackson Pollock's drip paintings are not typical art work, of course, these are still controversial in the art world.

There are several limitations of our approaches and we provide suggestions for future works. First, although the database is quite large, our dataset does not cover all paintings of the 10 art historical periods. In this reason, it is possible that there exist sampling bias in our results which we have not yet figured out. For better statistics, analyzing much bigger (higher resolution) images such as the Google Art Project 24 will give us more concrete insight for artistic style. Another possible error is unintended color distortion while converting original paintings into digital images, which may cause color information loss or bias. Even though we have checked that our results are not significantly changed from artificial color quality reductions, we could not follow all possible distortion effects. It is also true that present colors in the paintings are different from the original ones when they were completed. Old paintings are hard to preserve and usually suffer from degradation of physical materials of paintings such as oxidation and corrosion. These are big remaining issues not only for this study but also for all stylometric analyses in arts. Nonetheless, we expect that our quantitative study would be helpful to bridge the gap between art and science.

Source of dataset and statistics of paintings

In this study, we analyzed the digital images of European paintings in the Web Gallery of Art which exhibits artworks ranging from 11th century to mid-19th century 15 . The European paintings are classified into 10 art historical periods: medieval, early renaissance, northern renaissance, high renaissance, mannerism, baroque, rococo, neoclassicism, romanticism and realism. We filtered non-painting images, such as sculptures, miniatures, illustrations, architecture, pottery, glass paintings and wares. The number of refined images for each period is summarized in SI Table S1 . In total we have analyzed 8,798 painting artworks. As shown in Fig. S1 , over 94% of images are larger than 700 × 700 pixels and the largest one is 1350 × 1533. Therefore, the quality of the images is good enough to perform a statistical analysis. Furthermore, in order to discuss the difference between paintings and photographs, two more datasets are collected for hyper-realism and photographs. We collected 105 hyper-realism images from hyper-realism artists' web sites 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , the largest one is 2974 × 1954 and the two sets of photographs from the official Instagram site of National Geographic 32 and the online photo gallery of a Korean portal site 33 .

Box-counting dimensions

In order to investigate the fractal patterns of painted colors in the RGB color space, we measured box-counting dimensions 20 . The box-counting dimension is defined as the following:

where N (ε) is the number of non-empty boxes and the side length of each box is ε. A ε value represents the color quality in a digitized unit, for example, ε = 1 corresponds to 256 3 possible colors in 24-bit RGB color system and ε = 32 is associated with 8 3 possible colors in 8-bit RGB color system. Each ε value corresponds to log 2 (256/ε) 3 -bit RGB color system. Changing ε = 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1 (see Figure S6 in the supplement ) and examining N (ε) for each ε, we measured d box (ε).

Gray-scale transformation

To consider brightness surfaces of images, we converted digital color images into grayscale images using the following weighted filter:

where R, G and B are the red, green and blue intensities of a pixel and I gray-scale is the brightness of a certain color, which is interpreted as a height on the image. The reason for the difference in weighting values is due to the color sensitivity of a human eye 34 and there exist several other weighting filters for R, G and B intensities for specific purposes. However, there was no significant difference in the results with different filters.

Two-point height difference correlation function

To measure the roughness exponents of brightness (height) surfaces, a two-point height difference correlation (HDC) function is calculated 22 . The definition is

which follows the simple scaling form, G ( r ) ~ r 2α , for small r and where r is a distance between two pixel points, the over-bar represents the spatial average at a fixed distance r for all possible points, N r is the number of possible pairs at a distance r , h ( x ) is the height at a point x (0 ≤ h ( x ) ≤ 255) and α is the roughness exponent. The roughness exponent was measured in a double-logarithmic plot of G versus r , where the fitting range was used from r a = 10 to r b , where the HDC saturates to the same value both for the original and randomized paintings. It approximately corresponds to 30% of the image width and a square root of 9% of the image area.

Image entropy

Entropy of a gray-scale image 23 , is given by the following equation:

Taylor, R., Micolich, A. & Jonas, D. Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintings. Nature 399, 422 (1999).

Article   CAS   ADS   Google Scholar  

Lyu, S., Rockmore, D. N. & Farid, H. A digital technique for art authentification. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 101, 17006–17010 (2004).

Johnson, C. R., Jr et al. Image processing for artist identification–computerized analysis of Vincent van Gogh's painting brushstrokes. IEEE Signal Proc. Mag. Special Issue on Visual Cultural Heritage. 25, 37–48 (2008).

Article   ADS   Google Scholar  

Bressan, M., Cifarelli, C. & Perronnin, F. An Analysis of the relationship between painters based on their work. 15th IEEE Int. Conf. Image Proc. 113–116 (2008).

Olshausen, B. A. & DeWeese, M. R. Applied mathematics: The statistics of style. Nature 463, 1027–1028 (2010).

Hughes, J. M., Graham, D. J. & Rockmore, D. N. Quantification of artistic style through sparse coding analysis in the drawings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 1279–1283 (2010).

De Morgan, S. E. Memoir of Augustus de Morgan, by his wife Sophia Elisabeth de Morgan, with Selection of his Letters (Longmans, London, 1882).

Lutostowski, W. The Origin and Growth of Platos Logic (Longmans, Green, London., 1897).

Holmes, D. I. & Kardos, J. Who was the author? An introduction to stylometry. Chance 16, 5–8 (2003).

Article   MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Hughes, J. M., Foti, N. J., Krakauer, D. C. & Rockmore, D. N. Quantitative patterns of stylistic influence in the evolution of literature. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, 7862–7686 (2012).

Google Scholar  

Manaris, B. et al. Zipf's law, music classification and aesthetics. Comput. Music J. 29, 55–69 (2005).

Article   Google Scholar  

Huron, D. The ramp archetype: A study of musical dynamics in 14 piano composers. Psychol. Music 19, 33–45 (1991).

Casey, M., Rhodes, C. & Slaney, M. Analysis of minimum distances in high-dimensional music spaces. IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Proc. 16, 1015–1028 (2008).

Sapp, C. Hybrid numeric/rank similarity metrics for musical performances. Proc. ISMIR 99, 501–506 (2008).

Krén, E. & Marx, D. Web Gallery of Art, image collection, virtual museum, searchable database of European fine arts (1000-1900) http://www.wga.hu/ (1996) Date of access 09/05/2009

The National Gallery, London: Western European painting 1250–1900 http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/chiaroscuro Date of access 03/04/2013.

Earls, I. Renaissance Art: A Topical Dictionary (Greenwood Press, 1987).

Zipf, G. K. Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology (Addison-Wesley Press, Cambridge, 1949).

Abramowitz, M. & Stegun, I. A. Handbook of Mathematical Functions: with Formulas, Graphs and Mathematical Tables (Dover Publications, New York., 1965).

Gouyet, J. F. & Mandelbrot, B. Physics and Fractal Structures. (Springer-Verlag, New York., 1996).

Gage, J. Color and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism (University of California Press, Berkeley., 2000).

Barabási, A. L. & Stanley, H. E. Fractal Concepts in Surface Growth (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995).

Brink, A. D. Using spatial information as an aid to maximum entropy image threshold selection. Pattern Recogn. Lett. 17, 29–36 (1996).

Google Inc. Google Cultural Institute http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project (2011) Date of Access 14/02/2011

Jacques Bodin gallery http://www.jacquesbodin.com/ Date of Access 07/04/2010.

Roberto Bernardi http://www.robertobernardi.com/ Date of Access 07/04/2010.

Raphaella Spence http://www.raphaellaspence.com/ Date of Access 07/04/2010.

Hubert de Lartigue Accueil http://www.hubertdelartigue.com/ Date of Access 07/04/2010.

Gus Heinze on artnet http://www.artnet.com/artist/26318/gus-heinze.html Date of Access 07/04/2010.

Bernardo Torrens http://www.bernardotorrens.com/ Date of Access 07/04/2010.

The Hyperrealism Paintings by Denis Peterson http://www.denispeterson.com/ Date of Access 07/04/2010.

National Geographic official Instagram. http://instagram.com/natgeo (1999) Date of access 20/08/2014

Naver, officially launched in 1999, was the first Korean portal site to develop its own search engine. http://www.naver.com/ (1999) Date of access 20/07/2009

Pratt, W. K. Digital Image Processing (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1991).

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (No. 2011-0028908).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 305-701, Korea

Department of Applied Physics, Hanyang University, Ansan, 426-791, Korea

Seung-Woo Son

Department of Physics and Institute for the BioCentury, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 305-701, Korea

Hawoong Jeong

Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, Pohang, 790-784, Korea

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

D.K. designed and performed research, analyzed data and wrote the paper; S.-W.S. designed and performed research and wrote the paper; H.J. designed research and wrote paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary Information

Rights and permissions

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Kim, D., Son, SW. & Jeong, H. Large-Scale Quantitative Analysis of Painting Arts. Sci Rep 4 , 7370 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep07370

Download citation

Received : 13 January 2014

Accepted : 24 September 2014

Published : 11 December 2014

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/srep07370

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Impressions of guangzhou city in qing dynasty export paintings in the context of trade economy: a color analysis of paintings based on k-means clustering algorithm.

• Shanshan Ji

Heritage Science (2024)

Kolmogorov compression complexity may differentiate different schools of Orthodox iconography

• Daniel Peptenatu
• Ion Andronache
• Herbert Franz Jelinek

Scientific Reports (2022)

Dating ancient paintings of Mogao Grottoes using deeply learnt visual codes

• Qingquan Li

Science China Information Sciences (2018)

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines . If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: AI and Robotics newsletter — what matters in AI and robotics research, free to your inbox weekly.

Arts-Based Research

• First Online: 29 September 2022

Cite this chapter

• Robert E. White   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8045-164X 3 &
• Karyn Cooper 4  

1281 Accesses

In its purest form, art may be simultaneously immediate and eternal: immediate in its ability to grasp one’s attention, to provoke or inspire; eternal in its ability to create deep and permanent impressions. Responses to art may be visceral, emotional or psychological by turns or even together. As such, a work of art may possess almost unlimited potential to educate (Leavy, 2017). Although a pursuit of matters artistic may be a worthy pursuit for its own sake, the arts also represent invaluable opportunities across all research disciplines. As such, arts-based research exists at intersections between art and science. According to McNiff ( 2008 ), both arts-based research and science involve the use of systematic experimentation with the goal of gaining knowledge about life.

Aristotle once said or, at least, was said to have said, man by nature seeks to know. Research, in the broadest sense, is an effort to know and I believe that the forms of knowing vary enormously…. – Elliot Eisner, Stanford Graduate School of Education

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Barone, T. (2001). Touching eternity: The enduring outcomes of teaching . Teachers College Press.

Google Scholar  

Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (1997). Arts-based educational research. In R. M. Jaeger (Ed.), Complementary methods for research in education (pp. 95–109). American Educational Research Association.

Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (2012). Arts-based research . Sage.

Book   Google Scholar  

Behar, R. (2007). Ethnography in a time of blurred genres. Anthropology & Humanism, 32 (2), 145–155.

Article   Google Scholar  

Cahnmann-Taylor, M. (2008). Arts-based research: Histories and new directions. In M. Cahnmann-Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice (pp. 3–15). Routledge.

Chilton, G., Gerber, N. & Scotti, V. (2015). Towards an aesthetic intersubjective paradigm for arts based research: An art therapy perspective. Critical Approaches to Arts-based Research, 5 (1), 1–27. Retrieved December 24, 2018, from; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308971008_Towards_an_aesthetic_intersubjective_paradigm_for_arts_based_research_An_art_therapy_perspective

Chilton, G., & Leavy, P. (2014). Arts-based research practice: Merging social research and the creative arts. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research (pp. 403–422). Oxford University Press.

Cole, A., & Knowles, J. G. (2008). Arts-informed research. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 55–70). Sage.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Cooper, K., & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the postmodern era: Contexts of qualitative research. Springer.

Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2008). The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials, Volume 4 (pp. 1–42). Sage.

Eisner, E. W. (1991). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice . Merrill.

Eisner, E. W. (1993). Forms of understanding and the future of educational research. Educational Researcher, 22 (7), 5–11.

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind . Yale University Press.

Eisner, E. W. (2008). Art and knowledge. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research (pp. 3–12). Sage.

Eliot, T. S. (1961). The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In M. Mack, L. Dean, & W. Frost (Eds.), Modern poetry (Vol. VII, 2nd ed., pp. 130–134). Prentice-Hall.

Finley, S. (2005). Arts-based inquiry: Performing revolutionary pedagogy. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 681–694). Sage.

Finley, S. (2008). Arts-based research. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 71–82). Sage.

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of culture: Selected essays . Basic Books.

Geertz, C. (1988). Works and lives: The anthropologist as author . Polity Press.

Gerber, A. S. (2012). Field experiments: Design, analysis and interpretation . W. W. Norton.

Gray, C. (1996). Inquiry through practice: Developing appropriate research strategies . Retrieved, December 27, 2018, from: http://carolegray.net/Papers%20PDFs/ngnm.pdf

Greene, M. (1993). Diversity and inclusion: Toward a curriculum for human beings. Teachers College Record, 95 (2), 211–221.

Hesse, H. (2002). The glass bead game/Das Glasperlenspiel . Picador Books.

Irwin, R. L. (2014). Turning to a/r/tography. KOSEA Journal, 15 (1), 1–40.

Irwin, R. L., Beer, R., Springgay, S., Grauer, K., & Xiong, G. (2006). The rhizomatic relations of A/R/Tography. Studies in Art Education, 48 (1), 70–88.

Irwin, R. L., & de Cosson, A. (2004). A/R/Tography: Rendering oneself through arts-based living inquiry . Pacific Educational Press.

Irwin, R. L., & Springgay, S. (2008). A/r/tography as practice-based research. In S. Springgay, R. L. Irwin, C. Leggo, & P. Gouzouasis (Eds.), Being with A/r/tography (pp. xix–xxxiii). Sense Publishers.

Knowles, J. G., & Promislow, S. (2008). Using an arts methodology to create a thesis or dissertation. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 511–526). Sage.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by . Chicago University Press.

Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press.

Leavy, P. (2017). Introduction to arts-based research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 3–22). The Guilford Press.

Malchiodi, C. A. (2017). Creative arts therapies and arts-based research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 68–87). The Guilford Press.

McNiff, S. (2005). Foreword. In D. Kalmanowitz, B. Lloyd, & S. McNiff (Eds.), Art therapy and political violence: With art, without illusion (pp. xii–xvi). Routledge.

McNiff, S. (2008). Art-based research. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 29–40). Sage.

McNiff, S. (2009). Cross-cultural psychotherapy and art. Art Therapy, 26 (3), 100–106.

McNiff, S. (2015). Imagination in action: Secrets for unleashing creative expression . Shambala Publications.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception . Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Nyasulu, E. (2019) Eisner’s connoisseurship model . Retrieved November 6, 2018 from: https://www.academia.edu/23230956/Eisners_Connoisseurship_Model

O’Toole, J., & Beckett, D. (2010). Educational research: Creative thinking & doing . Oxford University Press.

Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences . State University of New York.

Saldaña, J. (2011). Fundamentals of qualitative research . Oxford University Press.

Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers . Sage.

Savin-Baden, M., & Major, C. H. (2012). Qualitative research: The essential guide to theory and practice . Routledge.

Savin-Baden, M., & Wimpenny, K. (2014). A practical guide to arts-related research . Sense.

Schratz, M., & Walker, R. (1995). Research as social change: New opportunities for qualitative research . Routledge.

Simons, H., & McCormack, B. (2007). Integrating arts-based Inquiry in evaluation methodology: Opportunities and challenges. Qualitative Inquiry, 13 (2), 292–311.

Sinner, A., Leggo, C., Irwin, R., Gouzouasis, P., & Grauer, K. (2006). Art-based educational research dissertations: Reviewing the practices of new scholars. Canadian Journal of Education, 29 (4), 1223–1270.

Springgay, S., Irwin, R. L., & Kind, S. (2005). A/r/tography as living inquiry through art and text. Qualitative Inquiry, 11 (6), 897–912.

Sullivan, G. (2006). Research acts in art practice. Studies in Art Education, 48 (1), 19–35.

Suppes, P., Han, B., & Lu, Z.-L. (1998). Brain-wave recognition of sentences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95 (26), 15861–15866.

Tierney, W. G. (1999). Guest editor’s introduction: Writing life’s history. Qualitative Inquiry, 5 (3), 307–312.

Turner, M. (1996). The literary mind: Origins of thought and language . Oxford University Press.

Wang, Q., Coemans, S., Siegesmund, R., & Hannes, K. (2017). Arts-based methods in socially engaged research practice: A classification framework. Art Research International, 2 (2), 5–39.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Education, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada

Robert E. White

OISE, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Karyn Cooper

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert E. White .

Researching Creations: Applying Arts-Based Research to Bedouin Women’s Drawings

Ephrat Huss

Julie Cwikel

Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

Huss, E. & Cwikel, J. (2005). Researching creations: Applying arts-based research to Bedouin women’s drawings. The International Journal of Qualitative Methods 4 (4), 44-62.

All problem solving has to cope with an overcoming of the fossilized shape … the discovery that squares are only one kind of shape among infinitely many. —Rudolf Arnheim, 1996, p. 35

In this article, the author examines the combination of arts-based research and art therapy within Bedouin women ’ s empowerment groups. The art fulfills a double role within the group of both helping to illuminate the women ’ s self-defined concerns and goals, and simultaneously enriching and moving these goals forward. This creates a research tool that adheres to the feminist principles of finding new ways to learn from lower income women from a different culture, together with creating a research context that is of direct potential benefit and enrichment for the women. The author, through examples of the use of art within lower income Bedouin women ’ s groups, examines the theoretical connection between arts-based research and art therapy, two areas that often overlap but whose connection has not been addressed theoretically.

Keywords: art-based research, art therapy, researching women from a nondominant culture

Introduction: Why use the arts in research?

While I am talking with Bedouin women about their drawings, the tin hut in the desert that is the community center in which we work sometimes reverberates with lively stories and emotional closeness, and sometimes I, as a Jewish Israeli art therapist and researcher, and they, as a Bedouin Israeli women’s empowerment group, are lost to each other: When I suggest that we summarize the meaning of the art therapy sessions for the women, they nod their heads politely and thank me, and ignore my questions.

My aim in this article is to see how art-based research literature and art therapy literature can jointly contribute to both working with and understanding women from a different culture.

Art as communication (rather than as therapy) can be defined as the association between words, behavior, and drawing created in a group setting. McNiff (1995), a prominent art therapist and one of the pioneers of art-based research, suggested that art therapy research should move from justification (of art therapy) to creative inquiry into the roles of the art itself.

I will first review arts-based research in an effort to understand the use of art as research. I will then survey art therapy’s practice-based knowledge concerning working with art with women from a different culture, and third, I will apply both of these knowledge bases to Bedouin women’s drawings and words from within my case study.

Art as a form of inquiry

The aim in arts-based research is to use the arts as a method, a form of analysis, a subject, or all of the above, within qualitative research; as such, it falls under the heading of alternative forms of research gathering. It is used in education, social science, the humanities, and art therapy research. Within the qualitative literature, there is an “explosion” in arts-based forms of research (Mullen, 2003).

How does arts-based research help us to understand women from a different culture? It seems that classic verbal methods of interviewing or questionnaire answering are not effective forms of inquiry with these women. Bowler (1997) described the difficulties she found in using questionnaires and interviewing, both of which stress Western-style verbal articulation, as research methods with lower income Asian women. She found that the women try to give the “right” answer or to be polite. In-depth interviewing was also conceived of as a strange and foreign way of constructing and exploring the world for these women (Bowler, 1997; Lawler, 2002; Ried, 1993). The women are often mistakenly conceived of as “mute” because they do not verbalize information along Western lines of inquiry (Goldberger & Veroff, 1995).

The search for a method that “gives voice” to silenced women is a central concern for feminist methodologies. De-Vault (1999) analyzed Western discourse as constructed along male content areas and suggested that we “need to interview in ways that allow the exploration of un-articulated aspects of women’s experiences … and explore new methodologies” (p. 65). Using art as a way of initiating self-expression can be seen as such a methodological innovation.

The arts-based paradigm states that by handing over creativity (the contents of the research) and its interpretation (an explanation of the contents) to the research participant, the participant is empowered, the relationship between researcher and research participant is intensified and made more equal, and the contents are more culturally exact and explicit, using emotional as well as cognitive ways of knowing. Mason (2002) and Sclater (2003) have suggested that drawing or storytelling, or the use of vignettes or pictures as a trigger within an interview, already common in work with children, could also help adults connect ideological abstractions to specific situations, using both personal and collective elements of cultural experience.

Thus, culture and gender unite in making Western research methods insufficient for understanding women from a different culture. Using visual data-gathering methods, then, can be seen as a movement offering alternate avenues of self-expression for women from traditional cultures.

The arts are considered “soft,” female ways of knowing; they tend to be used as a counterpoint to the seriousness of words (Mason, 2002). Alternatively (and mistakenly), as in photography, arts are considered a depiction of absolute reality (Pink, 2001).

Silverman (2000) argued that research must access what people do, and not only what people say.

Art brings “doing” into the research situation. However, the inclusion of arts in research poses many methodological difficulties, described by Eisner (1997) in the title of his article as “The Promises and Perils of Alternative Research Gathering methods.” Denzin and Lincoln (1998) described personal experience methods as going “inwards and outwards, backwards and forwards” (p. 152). The art product by definition creates more “gaps” and entrances than closed statements or conclusions (this is what enables so many different people to connect to one picture!). The art process also includes moves between silences, times of doing, listening, talking, watching, thinking, and different gaps and connections between the above. For example, Mason (2002), a qualitative researcher, described how research participants agonize about where to put whom when drawing a genogram or family diagram. She claimed that this process of “agonizing,” or creating the genogram, is an important component of the finished genogram and should not be left out.

Issues in arts-based research

Sclater (2003) explored the above-described complications of defining the “contours” of art-based research, as difficulties in defining issues related to the quality of art, to the relationship with the research participant, and to the relationship between art and words in arts based research.

Defining issues related to the quality of art

Mullen (2003) concluded that art-based research is focused on process as expressing the context of lived situations rather than the final products disconnected from the context of its creation. Mahon (2000) argued, through the concept of embedded aesthetics, that the aesthetic product is not inherent from within but is always part of broader social contexts, which both transform and are transformed by the art product and around which there is always a power struggle over different cultural meanings (see also Barone, 2003). At the same time, Mahon claimed that art includes elements and aesthetic languages that are specific to itself and that cannot be translated into action research or communication, or understood as direct translations of social interactions. The boundaries of quality are seen as marginalizing whoever does not conform to them, as in folk, vernacular, and outsider forms of art. In art-based research, elitism is replaced by art as communication, whereby reactions to the art work are more important than the quality of the art in terms of external aesthetic criteria. Within this paradigm, the criteria of communication and social responsibility predominate over craftsmanship (Finley, 2003; Mullen, 2003; Sclater, 2003).

Defining issue related to the relationship with the research participant

Another consideration for arts-based research is the setting of standards or limits around the roles of artist, researcher, and facilitator of creative activities. Mullen (2003) suggested,

We need to find ways not just to represent others creatively, but to enable them to represent themselves. The challenge is to go beyond insightful texts, to move ourselves and others into action, with the effect of improving lives. (p. 117)

Therefore, multiple or blurred roles are advantageous, as they reflect the complexity of reality within any research situation. By handing over creativity and its interpretation to the research participant, and including these elements within the research, the relationship between researcher and research participant is intensified, eliciting emotion and facilitating transformation. Thus, the blurring of the contours or roles of the researcher and research participant is seen as advantageous.

For example, cameras were given to lower income rural Chinese women, who, through photography, were able to communicate their concerns to policy makers with whom they would not engage in a direct verbal confrontation (Wang & Burris, 1994).

Defining issues related to the relationship between art and words in arts-based research

Art-based research literature addresses the problematic issue of how to work with the relationship between the verbal and nonverbal elements of the data, the art form, and its interpretation within a research context. Within research, the theoretical framework of understanding a work of art is harnessed to the reason art was used within the research puzzle (Mason, 2002). The use of verbal and nonverbal elements can be seen as a triangulation of data. It is important to understand why we are including art and to think about how the use of visual contents will help solve the “puzzle” of the research (Davis & Srinivasan, 1994; Finley, 2003; Mason, 2002). Save and Nuutinen (2003) defined the relationship between drawing\ and words (after researching a dialogue between the alternate use of pictures and words) as “creating a field of many understandings, creating a ‘third thing’ that is sensory, multi-interpretive, intuitive, and ever-changing, avoiding the final seal of truth” (p. 532).

Connections between art therapy and arts-based research

Art therapy, or any therapy, aims to connect, integrate, and transform experience and behavior. Art-based research also aims to transform, in that it can “use the imagination not only to examine how things are, but also how they could be” (Mullen, 2003, p. 117). It aims to connect and empower by creating something together with the research participants rather than the classic research orientation that takes information away from them (Finley, 2003; Sclater, 2003).

Sarasema (2003), a qualitative researcher, discussed the therapeutic advantages of storytelling for widowed research participants, claiming that art-based research is a way of creating knowledge that “connects head to heart” (p. 603).

Both art therapy and arts-based research involve the use of dialogue, observation, participant observation, and heuristic, hermeneutic, phenomenological, and grounded techniques of interpretation. Both relate to the ethical issues of art and interpretation ownership and a relational definition of art, including the skills of working simultaneously with both visual and verbal components (Burt, 1996; Mason, 2000; B. Moon, 2000; H. Moon, 2002; Talbot Green, 1989).

The difference between the two fields could be defined as art therapy implementing a theoretical psychological metaframework that organizes the therapeutic relationship while using the inherent qualities of different art materials and processes (Kramer, 1997). However, within art therapy, there are researchers who wish to discard these psychological metaframeworks and to focus more on “art-based” art therapy. For instance, in feminist, and studio or community art therapy, art is used both as an expression and a critique of society (Allen, 1995; B. Moon, 2000). Savneet (2000) claimed that art with women from the Developing World, such as the Bedouin women, can serve as a decolonizing tool by giving voice to women holding a polytheistic view of the world, as long as the interpreters of the art are the women and not an external interpreter. The nonverbal image should speak for itself, reducing the possibility of the artist-client’s being spoken over (Hogan, 1997). In addition, the image can be subversive, creating a narrative or counternarrative additional to the dominant one of words. The distancing or intermediating element of art can be helpful in interactions of inequality or of conflict (Dokter, 1998; Liebmann, 1996).

Art-based research, art therapy, and culture

Arts-based research literature focuses on art as a way to connect different people and to express different cultures, giving voice to nondominant narratives.

The culture of the viewer of the art will influence or interact with how the art is understood (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). Another possibility is to accept that art does not define cultures from the outside but enables multiple and complex views of that culture (Eisner, 1997; Pink, 2001).

Art therapy literature also stresses the ability of art to help make cultural issues manifest within pictures by the fact that each picture shows differing understandings and conceptions of the content drawn, rendering new perspectives (Gerity, 2000). Quiet people can create “loud” art work. Art connects to individual-subjective rather than generalized and stereotyped levels of experience. Thus, we see that factors inherent in the art language help integrate the individual with the culture (Campanelli, 1991; Campbell, 1999; Hiscox & Calisch, 1998).

Art therapy literature also addresses the complexity of art as a culturally embedded vessel in itself. Hocoy (2002) has argued that art as self-expression is a deeply Western construct, not necessarily suited to people from different cultures. Acton (2001) warned against being a “color blind” art therapist, ignoring the cultural differences and approaches to healing of different people and their manifestations within art. Hogan (2003) stressed that art therapists can claim to be culturally sensitive but actually dominate the participants by offering an art process or interpretation that is alien and strange to them (Acton, 2001). Conversely, Hocoy (2002) pointed out that assuming that everything is a cultural difference can also create misunderstandings of pictures. Cultural possibilities for misunderstanding are, on the one hand, bridged by the third object—the artwork—but, on the other, intensified by it. Thus, art is not a “magic” way of overcoming cultural differences but has the potential to enable the multifaceted nature of different cultural identities. The analyses of the art, and the relationship, are harnessed to the therapeutic aims, taking culture into account. In general, art therapy literature supplies much practice-based knowledge of how to take culture into account while focusing on harnessing the artwork and relationship to the therapeutic goals of the interaction.

Having briefly summarized and created a connection between the central issues within arts-based research, and within art therapy with a different culture, I will now apply them to some drawings by the Bedouin women from my research, as a set of relevant data on which to continue examining the above concepts.

The context of the Bedouin women

My aim is to outline briefly the levels of change and stress that some women in this culture are currently experiencing.

Meir (1997) has suggested that under the influence of the dominant Israeli culture (and despite ongoing political friction between the Israeli government and the Bedouins’ claim to the right to continue a traditional nomadic lifestyle), Bedouin society is undergoing change from a collective to an individualistic culture, and from a nomadic lifestyle to fixed settlements. This has resulted in the devaluation of women and children, who no longer work in the fields and tend animals as part of the economic support system, as well as changes in the traditional role of elders. In addition, the loss of the traditional Bedouin tribal supportive roles with an externalization of these responsibilities to state authorities, who invest limited resources and cultural relevance, has resulted in the decline of collective family support and funds. These changes are creating high levels of stress (Abu-Rabia-Abu-Kuider, 1994; Meir, 1997).

The status of Arab women in Israel can thus be defined as doubly oppressed, both by their patriarchal society and by the Israeli political regime. Paradoxically, Bedouin women’s dependence on the males in their family has sometimes increased due to perceptions of women’s exposure to work, education, and individualism as a threat to tradition. Indeed, Bedouin women in the Negev were found to be intensely affected by poverty and the interconnected social and health problems that this entails (Cwikel, 2002; Cwikel, Wiesel, & Al-Krenawi, 2003).

Conversely, Arab feminists Hijab (1988) and Sabbagh (1997) have differentiated between issues of concern for Western women in Western society and those for Arab women. In the West, concerns focus on issues such as reproductive rights, legal equity, expression of self through work and art, and sexual freedom; for Arab women, concerns center on education, health, and employment opportunities as well as legal reform and political participation. Power is measured in relation to other women and not in relation to men (Hijab, 1988; Sabbagh, 1997).

We have found that there are many difficulties for Western female researchers who are not from within the Bedouin communities to understand the diverse concerns of Bedouin women. Bedouin middle- class women will also be from a different “culture” from that of Bedouin working-class women. We see that there is a paramount need to find alternative research methods that can enable outsiders to “hear” the concerns of the Bedouin women and that can enable the Bedouin women to communicate those concerns first to themselves and then to the dominant culture.

Using art as a research method: The Bedouin women’s drawings

The following examples of drawings are from three ongoing groups, in which the art activity was introduced for a few sessions, aiming to enrich, reflect on, or enhance the existing self-defined concerns of the group rather than to present an external study objective or research agenda. The three groups were all of poor Bedouin women living in a township in the Negev, including a group of single mothers meeting as a support group, a group of women undergoing vocational training to open early childhood centers within their homes for extra income, and a group of women without writing skills, wishing to learn arts and crafts as enrichment and eventually to make products to sell.

The art activity in all the groups and meetings divided into set stages, although the contents were in accordance to the group’s wishes. The meetings were undertaken by means of a Bedouin social worker learning art therapy, so as to enhance cultural suitability and to enable the women to talk in Arabic.

As stated, the aim of the art was two pronged.

The first direction is art as empowerment, enrichment, or self-expression. This is in accordance with feminist research that aims to be of direct benefit to the participants (especially as the aims of the group and the contents were defined by them).

The second direction is art as a research method, or a way to understand the concerns of the women (which is a preliminary step to any type of empowering or enriching intervention).

Following is a detailed explanation of the art stages and examples of each of the stages from the different case studies. The intent is not to present a full case study but to examine the interaction between arts-based research and art as empowerment, and lower income Bedouin women.

From a bird’s eye overview, the method of using art described within this article undergoes the following stages, which can be repeated, refining, redefining, deepening, or enriching the contents through doing, observing, and talking.

Participant interacts with art making (within the context of the group leader and group).

Participant interacts with art and group and group leader simultaneously.

Participant observes the pictures as a group exhibition.

Participant re-interacts with the above stages of art making, discussing, and observing, over an issue that arose in the former “wave.”

Step 1: The art-making stage

Each participant draws a picture in oil pastels, or makes a clay statue of a subject agreed on in the initial discussion and connected to the overall aim of the group:

Oil pastels with different sizes of paper, and clay are offered. Oil pastels enable both lines and areas to be created quickly with minimal mess. Clay might be a more familiar medium for Bedouin women.

Drawing can be used in a combination of directive and nondirective forms, similar to different levels of structuring an interview.

The type of art making is process rather than product oriented, termed diagrammic art within art therapy (Liebmann, 1996), which helps access and raise an issue rather than working on a product that exists independent of the creator, as in an art class. This means not that the art does not “lead” the artist but that the products are relational, used to communicate rather than to display talent (Hogan, 2003).

In the sketch shown in Figure 1 , the black circle (left) symbolizes the drawer, the red (vertical) oblong, her picture, and the arrows, the mutual influence of her on the picture and the picture, on her. The brown circle (right) is the context within which this reflective activity takes place, created by and observed by the group leader or researcher, symbolizing the dominant culture.

The question of whether to suggest a topic to draw can be seen as analogous to decisions concerning the level of structure of an interview. I chose to suggest a few topics, so as to make the drawing less threatening for people not used to drawing. Oil pastels include the elements of color and line, encouraging a “story” to be told. On the other hand, clay might be a more familiar medium for some women, and three-dimensionality evokes different types of storytelling. Time is then given to work individually or in pairs (according to what is preferred by the women) on the subject.

The assumption is that the engagement in the art process creates a novel interaction with the subject matter, showing differing perspectives and enhancing a connection between the emotive and the cognitive which in turn promotes a process of reflection and prioritizing elements to be included in the art. This creates a silent prestage of creative organization of personal data from inside onto the empty page, before or together with translating it to the group and to the researcher-observer.

Each type of art assignment embodies a different “culture” within the room in terms of collectivist or individualist interactions. Dosamantes-Beaudry (1999) showed how cultural self construal is depicted by working individually or in pairs in dance therapy. The use of time, space, materials, and so on are all expressions of power and will influence the type of discussion that emerges, enacted both physically and symbolically within the organization of the arts behavior.

An additional question arises if the group leader or researcher, beyond becoming an observer and student of the participant’s pictures, also draws so as to make transparent and clarify her position. According to arts-based research, the aim is to “blur the boundaries” of the (unequal) relationship between researcher and research participant. According to art therapy, this point is much disputed, with some advocating the above and others considering the danger of taking the client-drawer’s space, or intimidating or influencing the client.

All of these considerations become the research context. They need to be examined reflexively as they express the researcher’s cultural bias.

For example, I was certain that oil pastels were the most flexible medium, perhaps being the closest to a writing tool, which is the dominant medium within my culture, but the older Bedouin women responded immediately to clay. One single mother, an abandoned first wife and an older Bedouin woman did not draw but, when I included clay, immediately made a clay ashtray before bursting into tears. She explained that the ashtray was like an older woman, an empty and discarded container. A mundane clay ashtray thus becomes an object of intense meaning and communication illustrating the communicative rather than aesthetic quality of art. As Finley (2003) stated, within this paradigm, the reactions to the poem are more important than the poem itself. The above example also illustrates how the visual stimuli initiated associations that were not decided on in advance, and that were influenced by the material and by the context of the group.

An example of a woman’s interaction with her art was an older woman from the single mothers’ group, who did not speak at Figure 2 all at the beginning but repeated a schema of squares within each meeting. In one meeting, she stated that it was a house. It is not clear if the squares were an illustration of the house, the idea of a house emerged from the graphic shape of the squares, or the idea of a house emerged from within the context of the things other women said, or all of the different elements combined together. Arnheim (1996) stressed the inherent dynamics of an art gestalt that influences the observer (rather than just being a neutral vessel for projection (Figure 2 ).

The example in Figure 3 illustrates how the dialogue between art and the individual can be transforming in itself. One young third wife, whose husband is in jail for violence, said of her picture of a house with flowers, that her father did not allow her to plant flowers by the house and did not allow her to play with other children, and he chose her husband for her. About the picture, she said, “I want a house; I want to build a house of my own. Most important, I want to plant a garden by the house.” The picture contained past and future in a causal narrative, based on a specific instant that gained symbolic meaning. The narrative is poetically organized, with three elements from the past and three from the future, corresponding to the three pictures. The dialogue was transformative, in that it allowed the drawer “to use imagination to examine how things are, but also how they could be otherwise” (Finley, 2003, p. 292). This exemplifies the arts-based paradigm that has as an aim to “go beyond insightful texts, to move ourselves and others into action, with the effect of improving lives” (Mullen, 2003. p. 117).

Another example was when an older woman, who was silent in all the meetings, made a cow, saying that a women is like a cow: When she has no milk left, she is discarded. A younger woman made a horse, saying that a woman is like a horse, strong and able to carry many burdens. Here, the art “answered” the art.

Another woman made an ashtray, and while describing how tired she was of managing as a single mother with no money, she broke the ashtray into many tiny bits in nervous movements creating, a physical embodiment of her emotional state. When the women talked to her and suggested solutions, she started sticking all the pieces together again. She looked at her hands and laughed, noticing this.

One woman ignored the two directives and decided to draw, first in pencil Figure 2 , Figure 3 and then in paint, a stylized sunset picture she had once seen in a magazine. She worked quickly and carefully, begging for a few more minutes at the end. I framed the picture for her. She stated that she wanted to execute a picture like that to decorate her house, as she could not afford to buy one. She had worked hard and was proud of the result (Figure 4 ).

Although for me, as a Western-oriented art therapist, the discussion or individualized creativity of the product is most important (rather than copying a preexisting picture), for this woman, activating the will power and concentration to execute or copy a picture that she could not afford to buy, so as to have the product, was an empowering experience that connected her intensely to the art experience. It seems that the autonomy and intimacy inherent in the exclusive interaction between the drawer and her drawing enabled the woman to pursue her aims rather than to comply with our directives (Hogan, 1997). The woman’s self-directedness is a good example of a negotiation of power as against the dominant culture represented by our suggestions.

Another example of the complex interplay of power between the researcher and women follows. For example, although each of the women in the early childhood training group had 5 to 10 children and were very knowledgeable about early childhood, when I asked them what they would like to focus on in the drawings, they answered with questions conveying helplessness, such as what should be done with a crying child, what games to play, how to connect to the children, and what to feed them. Conversely, they were very clear and confident about the contents of their drawings in relation to early childhood. The art seemed to be express power and knowledge, whereas their words expressed helplessness. Perhaps the drawing enabled a simultaneous double transference: Words were used to express helplessness toward representatives of the dominant culture, but confidence and knowledge were expressed through their drawings. The multifaceted component of the drawing and then talking about it, simultaneously expressed and overcame the disempowerment of learning within the context of the dominant culture.

The discussion stage

After completing the artwork, we laid them out in a circle on the floor at the drawers’ feet, facing toward the group, both clearly connected to their creator, and also creating a group exhibition. The participants ask one another questions about their art work, and the women explain or connect to other’s art work in a free discussion.

The following sketch illustrates the complexity and multiple interactions that occur simultaneously in this situation.

Thus, the art work, group interaction, and so on cannot be analyzed separately, out of context with the other elements.

For example, one young woman was too shy to talk about her drawing of a black circle (Figure 5 ).

“I think you are drawing that you feel closed in a circle you can’t get out of because there are so many people in your small house.” (Friend)

Her friend sitting next to her said that she thought the girl was sad there were so many people in her small house that is like a closed circle that one cannot get out of. The woman nodded in agreement.

The interaction between the two friends is similar to Shvadren’s (1992) analogy of observing an art work as two people, (the creator and the observer) gazing into a lighted window and both seeing new things within the room. Within feminist theory, this emphatic understanding of another person has been termed a relational form of interaction that focuses on empathy and is characteristic of female interactions (Goldberger & Veroff, 1995). Feminist theory suggests that words, as power structures that define reality, are created by men and thus do not describe women’s experiences within this male-dominated world. For example, De-Vault (1999), a feminist theorist, claimed that we “need to interview in ways that allow the exploration of unarticulated aspects of woman’s experiences” (p. 65). The black circle described above and its ensuing dialogue might be such an “interview.” In terms of the art product, we see a simple black circle that is not rich in terms of crafts or in terms of Western art but is an art form used in art therapy, focusing on receptive or connective elements that emphasize thoughts, emotions, and relationships.

An intercultural term for this emotional understanding is Steinberg and Bar-On’s (2002) concept of a dialogic moment. Observing Arab-Jewish conflict resolution groups, they noted that these moments of empathy and understanding between Jewish and Arab students occur when a specific story or personal detail is expressed rather than when generalized ideologies are expressed. Drawing seems to encourage the description of a specific or personal instant and a specific way of “telling” or interpreting that instant, creating, in Abu-Lughod’s (1991) terms, “ethnographies of the particular … [that] capture the cultural and social ‘forces’ that are only embodied in the actions of individuals in time and space” (p. 156).

The visual stimuli themselves can also encourage engagement beyond the areas of conflict. For example, the Bedouin social worker who facilitated art with the group of single mothers stated in her summary of the experience that for the first time (with many years experience working with the women), she felt flooded and disturbed by their suffering. This might be what Finley (2003) defined as the purpose of arts-based inquiry, to contribute to deeper relationships between researcher and research participant.

Within the context of the group discussion, the picture creates a concrete anchor (to use yet another metaphor!) that can be related to on many different levels of language, with everyone seeing or reacting to the same trigger (the picture being discussed). It becomes a transitional space that is a useful mediator for people from different cultures, who formulate their stories along different types of narrative. The meanings of the picture can be negotiated and clarified through both people’s observing the same object. Drawing, and then discussing the drawings, serves as a form of self-interpretation, or validation, of the subject drawn, that is important with intercultural communication. In terms of art therapy, it is congruent with the feminist and phenomenological stands that stress the artist’s understandings of the art work.

For example, one woman drew a cupful of flowers (a traditional subject in Islamic art), then said that her life is empty and boring, not like the flowers, expressing an opposite relationship to the picture. Alternatively, another woman drew a fish in a stormy sea (Figure 6 ) to express her loneliness, far from her maternal family, using a metaphor from the natural world—expressing silence, loneliness, and the turbulence of her circumstances. Another woman used a metaphor of a black cloud, stating that that was the feeling of being a Bedouin woman without a husband.

One woman took this feeling as a confrontation, asking “Why did God give us [women] hands, if hen does not allow us to use them?” She then drew a picture of the modern and the traditional women holding hands and making a connection, stating that the modern women is pulling the traditional women in her direction, as can be seen in her picture (Figure 7 ). Another woman drew a television and said that all day she sits crying in front of the TV, bored and lonely, thus creating a metonym (Figure 8 ).

One woman, whose shack is going to be pulled down because she does not have a building permit, drew a steep slope, with a house at the end. She said that she feels the energy needed to keep her house is too steep a slope for her to climb, juxtaposing a concrete situation and a metaphor.

(top to bottom)

The above words describe different personal and cultural “entrances” to the pictures. Discussing the contents of the pictures thus helps clarify the participant’s stand toward her picture.

The art directive itself can also disclose cultural differences. For example, we asked all the participants to draw a symbol of themselves as an introduction (a common exercise in art therapy). However, they all drew a wish, something that they wanted, or something abstract. At first, it seemed that they had not understood or ignored the request for a symbol of self. However, a wish can also be understood as an abstract symbol of self extended into time and space outside or beyond the self. This might relate to collective identity, which extends beyond the individual, and to the aesthetics of Islamic art, aiming to cheer and express wishes for a better future. We see that basic concepts, such as symbols, constitute different formulations or “shapes” within different cultures. The concrete element of drawing makes the specific characteristics of concepts such as a symbol, wish, or moment less abstract and thus more overt. The dual activity of both concretely drawing or enacting these concepts, and then explaining them as they appear in the picture helps access these subtle differences that are lost in verbal interaction, where we can mistakenly assume that by using the same concept (such as a symbol) we mean the same thing. Bhaba’s (1994) statement that concepts, such as death, mothering, and aging, cannot be translated, having different values and meaning different things in different cultures. Thus, it is not possible to “translate” one culture into another.

Art can contain different elements simultaneously.

One young woman said about the blue-and-white abstract silkscreen made in the arts and crafts group, that the brooch’s colors reminded her of the sea, with a boy standing in the distance. Everyone laughed and she said that she wanted to get married, although marriage is the end of freedom: You stay at home and do not go to the sea anymore. Thus, the picture enabled a dialogue of ambivalence. When people live in more than one culture and are undergoing acculturation, the ability to integrate different cultural or personal understandings, or even opposing feelings as part of a whole, is considered beneficial to the acculturation process. Talking in a linear sequence seems to invite a more unified dialogue, as each point has to come after the last, rather than being shown simultaneously. The art as a trigger for discussion enabled a complex version of reality that is not reduced to one truth.

Examples of the Magen David (A woman’s wishes). “ I wish for a house.” (Below) “ I wish for peace.”

Another example is of a young teenage girl from this group with no head cover wearing jeans and a large Jewish and national symbol that is currently part of the teen fashion in necklaces in Israel, who drew a picture of a Bedouin tent and said that she liked the traditional Bedouin culture best (perhaps also expressing a wish for less complicated times in terms of identity). This is similar to Abu-Lughod’s (1991) suggestion that specific, individual examples negate cultural stereotypes. For instance, she describes a woman swearing and citing from the Koran in the same sentence, thus refusing to be reduced to one truth (Abu-Lughod, 1991).

One woman drew a picture of a bus (driving accidents are a major problem within Israel in general and within the Bedouin villages and townships in particular). She described how, after many failures, she had just completed her driving theory test but must now find the money for driving lessons; otherwise, the theory would be out of date. She stated that, like the traffic light, when there is war, one needs to stop. She continued about how important her driving license was for her, as it would enable her to take the children to different places. She said her brothers were helping her to pay for the lessons, because she had left school at the age of 8 to look after them. She had written the words “ derech shalom-ve lo lemilhama ” above the bus, “a journey of peace and not war.” She explained, “I want there to be peace—inside me, between people, and between countries.” This is an example of the multiple levels of future and present, particularity and generalness, concreteness and abstractness, that can be contained within one picture, making it especially suitable for people undergoing cultural (and physical) transitions within their lives, incorporating different cultures.

To summarize, the reflective dialogue between drawer and drawing, and the interactive elements of the group dynamics combine to create a triangular situation with many different types of interactions, for instance between a drawer and her own drawing, between a drawer and other people’s drawings, and between a drawer and other people. In the following section, I illustrate the complexity and multiple interactions of this situation, showing the different types of interactions between the words and the art, and explaining the art creates a multifaceted level of content that refuses to be reduced to a simple entity.

Group stage, the whole picture

The third stage can be observing the art works as a unified exhibition or group statement. Recurring themes become overt both to the group itself and to an outsider, such as the researcher (Campbell, 1999; Hiscox & Calisch, 1998). Cultural stands or beliefs are often so embedded that we are usually not aware of them ourselves. Observing the meanings within the drawings of other people from the same culture strengthens and defines these messages, creating a type of critical pedagogy.

For example, when observing all the pictures of “what a child needs,” we noticed that the children always played outside and were depicted in rich color. The caretakers inside were depicted without color and in minimal pencil lines. Thus, outside was defined as the focus for exploration—having implications for creating a culturally sensitive early childhood curriculum for Bedouin children (Dosmantes-Beaudry, 1999).

This is also congruent with feminist group therapy, which defines problems as outside the individual, related to context, and experienced by anyone within that context (rather than defined as a personal pathology). In terms of art therapy, art work can become “embodied” with meanings that hold symbolic meaning for the whole group.

For example, houses were a strong theme with the single mothers, and we devoted a session to drawing more houses so as to understand their implications. This led to the following, last stage of this method.

Validating or deepening understandings through additional words or drawings

The fourth stage of the drawing process entails re-viewing pictures and re-drawing issues that it is felt need more clarification.

In terms of arts-based research, this serves as a type of validating mechanism, in that the group exhibition gives a chance for themes to be discussed and verified on the spot through the multiple voices or comments of the group. One of the advantages of drawings is that they are constant and permanent fixtures that can be re-viewed and additional meanings gained with each viewing. At the same time, the meanings can constantly shift, enabling different words or associations at different viewings (just as we enjoy observing a work of art again and again, giving it additional or different meanings).

Within art therapy, the observation of former pictures is used as a way to enhance self-reflection and emotive involvement with (or projection onto) the picture. Schaverien (1992) has discussed how a picture can become temporarily infused with much emotional meaning for the viewer, whereas at a later stage, the picture as a talisman is relinquished.

In this article, I attempted to combine the theories of art therapy and of art-based research concerned with working with a different culture. Canclini (1996) stated that we are used to the fusion of different cultural elements, such as modern art books sitting together with crafts books on our coffee tables, to multimedia reproductions of “high” culture, to foods that combine different cultural traditions, but that we mistakenly shy away from creating “hybrid” mixes of academics and of clinical practice.

This article can be seen as a double meeting between art as therapy or empowerment, and art as research, and between Bedouin women and Jewish Western art therapy. This combination was used to create an art activity that, I hope, is both informative as research and empowering as self-expression and enrichment.

It seems that art as research can enhance understanding between the Bedouin women and the dominant Israeli culture by offering a complex, multifaceted expression of the Bedouin women’s concerns, together with their understanding of these concerns. Feminist researchers have stated, “to hear women’s perspectives accurately, we have to learn to listen in sterio, receiving both the dominant and the muted channels clearly, and understanding the relationship between them” (Anderson & Jack, 1991, p. 11).

Similarly, art as therapy or empowerment can offer the transformative, enriching, and empowering elements of creating art, making it a worthwhile endeavor for the women. Both uses do not exclude the need for constant reflexivity in understanding the cultural meanings implied by different art interventions.

Thus, the research context becomes of direct potential benefit to the women, uniting research and therapy aims—observation and self-observation, action and reaction.

Spivak addresses the difficulty in “admitting non-Western cultural production into the Western academy without side-stepping its challenges to metropolitan canons and thus perpetuating the ‘subalterization’ of third world culture” (p. 254). This difficulty in accepting different forms of art—both Bedouin women’s art, such as crafts, and art within psychology, such as in art therapy (rather than art as diagnostics) and art within research (rather than words only)—challenges Western classic conceptions of art and its roles (and, thus, of Bedouin women, of psychology, and of research). The limitation of this article is that I did not fully explore the meanings of the art experience for the women. Another limitation is the paradox built into the method, and mentioned above, of trying to access non-Western experience, through Western methods.

When working with art materials, the narrative is developed through the interaction of doing and reflecting on one’s actions, in a constantly modifying activity. For example, wet paint makes the paper too wet, and so pencil can be tried, but then the shapes are too defined and have lost their essence and vitality. Oil pastels can be used as a compromise, although this might result in the loss of some of the essence of both vitality and definition, and so on, until a “good enough” solution is created. This constant negotiation and renegotiation of actions and their meanings seems an inherent part of any intercultural communication made concrete and visible through using art.

Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing against culture. In R. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present (pp. 138-161). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.

Abu-Rabia-Abu-Kuider, S. (1994). Girl’s school drop-outs from the Bedouin educational system. Notes on the Bedouin, 34, 6-23.

Acton, D. (2001). The color blind therapist. Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 18(2), 109 113.

Allen, P. (1995). Art is a way of knowing. Boston: Shambhala.

Anderson, K., & Jack, D. (1991). Learning to listen: Interview techniques and analysis. In S. Berger & D. Patei (Eds.), Women’s words: The feminist practice of oral history (pp. 11-26). New York; Routledge.

Arnheim, R. (1996). The split and the structure: Twenty-eight essays. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Barone, T. (2003). Challenging the educational imaginary. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 202-218.

Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.

Bowler, M. (1997). Problems with interviewing, experiences with service providers and clients. In G. Miller & R. Dingwall (Eds.), Context and method in qualitative research (pp. 66-77). London: Basic Books.

Burt, H. (1996). Beyond practice, a postmodern and feminist perspective on art therapy research. Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 13(2), 34-36.

Campanelli, M. (1991). Ethno-cultural considerations in art therapy. American Journal of Art Therapy, 30(2),

Campbell, J. (Ed.). (1999). Art therapy, race and culture. Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley.

Canclini, N. (1996). Strategies for entering and leaving modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Cwikel, J. (2002). Health and wellbeing of Bedouin women in the Negev. Be’er Sheva, Israel: Center for Researching Bedouin Society and Center for Research and Promotion of Women’s Health.

Cwikel, J., Wiesel, R., &Al-Krenawi, A. (2003). The physical and psychosocial health of Bedouin Arab women of the Negev area of Israel. Violence Against Women, 9(2), 240-257.

Davis, L., & Srinivasan, M. (1994). Feminist research within a battered women’s shelter. In E. Sherman & W. Reid (Eds.), Qualitative research in social work (pp. 347-348). New York: Columbia University Press.

Denzin, K., & Lincoln, Y. (1998). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. London: Sage.

De-Vault, M. (1999). Liberating method: Feminism and social research. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Dokter, D. (1998). Arts therapists, refugees and migrants: Reaching across borders. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Dosamantes-Beaudry, M. (1999). Divergent cultural self-construals: Implications for the practice of dance/movement therapy—The psychology of control in America and Japan. Arts in Psychotherapy, 26(4), 225-231.

Eisner, E. (1997). The promises and perils of alternative forms of data representation. Educational Researcher, 26(6), 4-20.

Finley, S. (2003). Arts based inquiry in QI: Seven years from crises to guerrilla warfare. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 281-297.

Gerity, L. (2000). The subversive art therapist: Embracing cultural diversity in the art room. Journal of the American Art Therapists Association, 7, 35-46.

Goldberger, N., & Veroff J. (1995). Culture and psychology reader. New York: New York University Press.

Hijab, N. (1988). Women-power: The Arab debate over women and work. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hiscox, A., & Calisch, C. (1998). Tapestry of cultural issues in art therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Hocoy, D. (2002). Cultural issues in art therapy theory. Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 19(4), 141-146.

Hogan, S. (1997). Feminist approaches to art therapy. London: Routledge.

Hogan, S. (2003). Gender issues in art therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Kramer, E. (1971). Art therapy with children. New York: Schoken.

Lawler, M. (2002). Narrative in social research. In T. May (Ed.), Qualitative research in action (pp. 242-259). London: Sage.

Liebmann, M. (1996). Arts approaches to conflict. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Mahon, M. (2000). The visible evidence of cultural producers. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 467-492.

Mason, J. (2000). Qualitative researching. London: Sage.

Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative interviewing: Asking, listening and interpreting. In T. May (Ed.), Qualitative research in action (pp. 225-242). London: Sage.

McNiff, S. (1995). Art based research. Boston: Shambhala.

Meir, A. (1997). As nomadism ends. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Moon, B. (2000). Ethical issues in art therapy. Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas.

Moon, H. (2002). Studio art therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Mullen, C. (2003). A self fashioned gallery of aesthetic practice. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 165-182.

Pink, S. (2001). Doing visual ethnography. London: Sage.

Ried, P. (1993). Poor women in psychological research: Shut up and shut out. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 17, 133-150.

Sabbagh, S. (1997). Arab women. Brookline, MA: Olive Branch.

Sarasema, T. (2003). Bereavement and the healing power of arts and writing. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(4), 603-621.

Save, I., & Nuutinen, K. (2003). At the meeting place of word and picture: Between art and inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(4), 515-535.

Savneet, T. (2003). Decolonization: Third World women and conflicts. In S. Hogan (Ed.), Gender issues in art therapy (pp. 185-193). London: Jessica Kingsley.

Schaverien, J. (1992). The revealing image: Analysitcal art psychotherapy in theory and in practice. London: Routledge.

Sclater, D. (2003). The arts and narrative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(4), 621-625.

Silverman, D. (2000). Doing qualitative research: A practical handbook. London: Sage.

Spivak, G. (1987). In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. New York: Methuen.

Steinberg, S., & Bar-On, D. (2002). An analysis of the group process in encounters between Jews and Palestinians using a typology for discourse classification. Pergamon, 26, 199-214.

Talbot Green, M. (1989). Feminist scholarship: Spitting into the mouths of the gods. Arts in Psychotherapy, 16(4), 253-261.

Wang, C., & Burris, M. (1994). Empowerment through photo-novella. Health Education Quarterly, 21, 172-185.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

White, R.E., Cooper, K. (2022). Arts-Based Research. In: Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_8

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_8

Published : 29 September 2022

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-85126-2

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-85124-8

eBook Packages : Education Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Original Language Spotlight
• Alternative and Non-formal Education 
• Cognition, Emotion, and Learning
• Curriculum and Pedagogy
• Education and Society
• Education, Change, and Development
• Education, Cultures, and Ethnicities
• Education, Gender, and Sexualities
• Education, Health, and Social Services
• Educational Administration and Leadership
• Educational History
• Educational Politics and Policy
• Educational Purposes and Ideals
• Educational Systems
• Educational Theories and Philosophies
• Globalization, Economics, and Education
• Languages and Literacies
• Professional Learning and Development
• Research and Assessment Methods
• Technology and Education
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Arts-based research.

• Janinka Greenwood Janinka Greenwood University of Canterbury
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.29
• Published online: 25 February 2019

Arts-based research encompasses a range of research approaches and strategies that utilize one or more of the arts in investigation. Such approaches have evolved from understandings that life and experiences of the world are multifaceted, and that art offers ways of knowing the world that involve sensory perceptions and emotion as well as intellectual responses. Researchers have used arts for various stages of research. It may be to collect or create data, to interpret or analyze it, to present their findings, or some combination of these. Sometimes arts-based research is used to investigate art making or teaching in or through the arts. Sometimes it is used to explore issues in the wider social sciences. The field is a constantly evolving one, and researchers have evolved diverse ways of using the communicative and interpretative tools that processes with the arts allow. These include ways to initially bypass the need for verbal expression, to explore problems in physically embodied as well as discursive ways, to capture and express ambiguities, liminalities, and complexities, to collaborate in the refining of ideas, to transform audience perceptions, and to create surprise and engage audiences emotionally as well as critically. A common feature within the wide range of approaches is that they involve aesthetic responses.

The richness of the opportunities created by the use of arts in conducting and/or reporting research brings accompanying challenges. Among these are the political as well as the epistemological expectations placed on research, the need for audiences of research, and perhaps participants in research, to evolve ways of critically assessing the affect of as well as the information in presentations, the need to develop relevant and useful strategies for peer review of the research as well as the art, and the need to evolve ethical awareness that is consistent with the intentions and power of the arts.

• multisensory
• performance

Introduction

The term arts-based research is an umbrella term that covers an eclectic array of methodological and epistemological approaches. The key elements that unify this diverse body of work are: it is research; and one or more art forms or processes are involved in the doing of the research. How art is involved varies enormously. It has been used as one of several tools to elicit information (Cremin, Mason, & Busher, 2011 ; Gauntlett, 2007 ; Wang & Burns, 1997 ) and for the analysis of data (Boal, 1979 ; Gallagher, 2014 ; Neilson, 2008 ), and so it serves as an enrichment to the palette of tools used in qualitative research. It has been used in the presentation of findings (Bagley & Cancienne, 2002 ; Conrad, 2012 ; Gray & Sinding, 2002 ) and so occupies a space that could be responded to and evaluated as both art and research. It has been used to investigate art and the process of art-making. The emergence of the concept and practice of a/r/tography (Belliveau, 2015 ; Irwin, 2013 ; Springgay, Irwin, & Kind, 2005 ), for example, places art-making and its textual interpretation in a dynamic relationship of inquiry into the purpose, process, and meaning of the making of an artwork.

The field is multifaceted and elusive of definition and encompassing explanation. This article does not attempt such definitions. But it does risk describing some well-trodden pathways through the field and posing some questions. Illustrative examples are offered from the author’s work, as well as citing of works by other researchers who use arts-based approaches.

My own explorations of arts-based research began many years ago, before the term came into usage. I was commissioned to develop a touring play for a New Zealand youth theater, and I chose to write a docudrama, Broadwood: Na wai te reo? (Greenwood, 1995 ). The play reported the case of a remote, rural, and predominantly Maori school that made Maori language a compulsory subject in its curriculum. The parents of one boy argued against the decision, claiming the language held no use for their son. The dispute was aired on national television and was debated in parliament. The minister agreed that the local school board had the right to make the decision after consultation with parents and community. The dispute ended with the boy being given permission to do extra math assignments in the library during Maori language classes. To develop the script, I interviewed all the local participants in the case and sincerely sought to capture the integrity of their views in my dialogue. I accessed the minister of education’s comments through public documents and media and reserved the right to occasionally satirize them. Just a week or two before final production, the family’s lawyer officially asked for a copy of the script. To my relief, it was returned with the comment that the family felt I had captured their views quite accurately. The youth theater was invited to hold its final rehearsal on the local marae (a traditional tribal Maori ground that holds a meeting house and hosts significant community occasions), and a local elder offered the use of an ancestral whalebone weapon in the opening performance, instead of the wooden one made for the production. The opening performance took place in the school itself, and the boy, together with his parents and family friends, sat in the audience together with hundreds of community people. The play had an interactive section where the audience was asked to vote in response to a survey the school had originally sent out to its community. The majority of the audience voted for Maori language to be part of the mandatory curriculum. The boy and his family voted equally emphatically for it not to be. The play then toured in New Zealand and was taken to a festival in Australia.

At the time I saw the work purely in terms of theater—albeit with a strongly critical social function. Looking back, I now see it was a performative case study. I had carefully researched the context and respectfully interviewed participants after gaining their informed consent. The participants had all endorsed my reporting of the data. The findings were disseminated and subject to popular as well as peer review. The performances added an extra dimension to the research: they actively invited audience consideration and debate.

This article discusses the epistemology that underlies arts-based approaches to research, reviews the purposes and value of research that involves the arts, identifies different stages and ways that art may be utilized, and addresses questions that are debated in the field. It does not seek to disentangle all the threads within this approach to research or to review all key theorizations and possibilities in the field. The arena of arts-based research is a diverse and rapidly expanding one, and it is only possible within this discussion to identify some of the common underlying characteristics and potentialities and to offer selected examples. Because this discussion is shaped within an essay format, rather than through a visual or performative collage, there is the risk of marking a limited number of pathways and of making assertions. At the same time, I acknowledge that the discussion might have alternatively been conducted through arts-based media, which might better reflect some of the liminalities and interweaving layers of art-based processes (see further, Greenwood, 2016 ).

The term art itself compasses a wide and diverse spectrum of products and process. This article focuses particularly on dramatic and visual art, while acknowledging that the use of other art forms, such as poetry, fiction, dance, film, and fabric work, have been variously used in processes of investigation. The word art is used to indicate the wider spectrum of art activities and to refer to more specific forms and processes by their disciplines and conventions.

Why Use Art?

One of the main reasons for the growth of arts-based approaches to research is recognition that life experiences are multi-sensory, multifaceted, and related in complex ways to time, space, ideologies, and relationships with others. Traditional approaches to research have been seen by increasing numbers of researchers as predominantly privileging cerebral, verbal, and linearly temporal approaches to knowledge and experience. The use of art in research is one of many shifts in the search for truthful means of investigation and representation. These include, among others, movements toward various forms of narratives (Riessman, 2008 ), recognition of indigenous knowledges, and indigenous ways of sharing and using knowledge (Bharucha, 1993 ; Smith, 2014 ), auto-ethnographies (Ellis, 2004 ), conceptualizations of wicked questions (Rittel & Webber, 1973 ), processes of troubling (Gardiner, 2015 ), and queering (Halperin, 2003 ). Preissle ( 2011 ) writes about the “qualitative tapestry” (p. 689) and identifies historic and contemporary threads of epistemological challenges, methods, and purposes, pointing out the ever-increasing diversity in the field. Denzin and Lincoln ( 2011 ) describe qualitative research as a site of multiple interpretative practices and, citing St. Pierre’s ( 2004 ) argument that we are in a post “post” period, assert that “we are in a new age where messy, uncertain multi-voiced texts, cultural criticism, and new experimental works will become more common, as will more reflexive forms of fieldwork, analysis and intertextual representation” (p. 15). Springgay, Irwin, and Kind ( 2005 ) assert that a/r/tography is not a new branch of qualitative research but a methodology in its own right, and that it conceptualizes inquiry as an embodied encounter through visual and textual experiences. The use of art in research is a succession of approaches to develop methodology that is meaningful and useful.

Art, product, and process allow and even invite art-makers to explore and play with knowing and meaning in ways that are more visceral and interactive than the intellectual and verbal ways that have tended to predominate in Western discourses of knowledge. It invites art viewers to interact with representations in ways that involve their senses, emotions, and ideas. Eisner ( 1998 , 2002 ) makes a number of significant assertions about the relationship between form and knowledge that emphasize the importance of art processes in offering expanded understandings of “what it means to know” (Eisner, 1998 , p. 1). He states: “There are multiple ways in which the world can be known: Artists, writers, and dancers, as well as scientists, have important thongs to tell about the world” (p. 7). Like other constructivists (Bruner, 1990 ; Guba, 1996 ), he further argues that because human knowledge is a constructed form of experience, it is a reflection of mind as well as nature, that knowledge is made, not simply discovered. He then reasons that “the forms through which humans represent their conception of the world have a major influence on what they are able to say about it” (p. 6), and, making particular reference to education, he states that whichever particular forms of representation become acceptable “is as much a political matter as an epistemological one” (p. 7). Eisner’s arguments to extend conceptualizations of knowledge within the field of education have been echoed in the practices of art-based researchers.

Artists themselves understand through their practice that art is way of coming to know the world and of presenting that knowing, emergent and shifting though it may be, to others. Sometimes the process of coming to know takes the form of social analysis. In Guernica , as a well-known example, Picasso scrutinizes and crystallizes the brutal betrayals and waste of war. In Caucasian Chalk Circle , Brecht fractures and strips bare ideas of justice, loyalty, and ownership. Their respective visual and dramatic montages speak in ways that are different from and arguably more potent than discursive descriptions.

In many indigenous cultures, art forms are primary ways of processing and recording communally significant information and signifying relationships. For New Zealand Māori, the meeting house, with its visual images, poetry, song, oratory, and rituals, is the repository library of mythic and genealogical history and of the accumulated legacies of meetings, contested positions, and nuanced consensual decisions. Art within Māori and other indigenous culture is not an illustrative addition to knowledge systems, it is an integral means of meaning making and recording.

One of the characteristics of arts and arts-based research projects is that they engage with aesthetic understandings as well as with discursive explanations. The aesthetic is a contested term (Greenwood, 2011 ; Hamera, 2011 ). However, it is used here to describe the engagement of senses and emotion as well as intellectual processes, and the consequent collation of semiotics and significances that are embedded in cultural awareness and are variously used by art makers and art viewers to respond to works of art. An aesthetic response thus is a visceral as well as rational one. It may be comfortable with ambiguities, and it may elude verbalization.

The processes of art-making demand a commitment to a continuous refinement of skills and awareness. Art-viewers arguably also gain more from an artwork as they acquire the skills and literacies involved with that particular art form and as they gain confidence to engage with the aesthetic. However, viewers may apprehend meaning without mastery of all the relevant literacies. I recall an experience of watching flamenco in El Puerto de Santa Maria, a township outside Cadiz. My senses drank in the white stone of former monastery walls and the darkening sky over an open inner courtyard. My muscles and emotions responded spontaneously to the urgency of the guitar and the beaten rhythms on a packing case drum. My nerves tensed as the singer’s voice cut through the air. The two dancers, both older and dressed in seemingly causal fawn and grey, riveted my attention. I was a stranger to the art form, and I did not know the language of the dance and could not recognize its phases or its allusions. I did feel the visceral tug of emotion across space. My heart and soul responded to something urgent, strangely oppressive, but indefinable that might have an apprehension of what those who understand flamenco call duende . If I was more literate in the art form, I would no doubt have understood a lot more, but the art, performed by those who did know and had mastered its intricacies, communicated an experience of their world to me despite my lack of training. In that evening, I learned more about the experience of life in southern Spain than I had in my earlier pursuit of library books and websites.

Art, thus, is positioned as a powerful tool that calls for ever-refining expertise in its making, but that can communicate, at differing levels, even with those who do not have that expertise. Researchers who use art draw on its rich, and sometimes complex and elusive, epistemological bases to explore and represent aspects of the world. The researchers may themselves be artists; at the least, they need to know enough of an art form to be aware of its potential and how to manipulate it. In some cases intended participants and audiences may also be artists, but often they are not. It is the researcher who creates a framework in which participants join in the art or in which audiences receive it.

Art, Research Purpose, and Research Validity

So far, the argument for the value of art as a way of knowing is multifarious, embodied, and tolerant of ambivalences and ambiguities. Where then are the rigors that are widely held as essential for research? It can be argued that arts-based research, to be considered as research, needs to have explicit research purpose and needs to subject itself to peer critique.

As has been widely noted (Eisner, 1998 ; Leavy, 2017 ; Sullivan, 2010 ), the making of art involves some investigation, both into the process of making and into some aspect of the experiential world. In research, that purpose needs to be overt and explicit. When the purpose is identified, then the choice of methods can be open to critical scrutiny and evaluation. The design of an arts-based research project is shaped, at its core, by similar considerations as other research.

Arts-based research needs to be explicit about what is being investigated. If the objective is not clear, then the result may still be art, but it is hard to call it research. Purpose determines which of the vast array of art strategies and processes will be selected as the research methods. The trustworthiness of any research depends on a number of factors: at the design stage, it depends on a clear alignment between the purpose of the research and the methods selected to carry out the investigation. In arts-based research, as in other research, it is vital that the researcher identifies the relationship between purpose and selected art tools, and offers recipients of the research clear means to evaluate and critique the reliability and usefulness of the answers that come from the research. This is where choices about strategies need to be clearly identified and explained, and both the aims and boundaries of the investigation need to be identified.

This does not imply need for a rigid and static design. Art is an evolving process, and the research design can well be an evolving one, as is the case with participatory action research (Bryndon-Miller, Karl, Maguire, Noffke, & Sabhlok, 2011 ), bricolage (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 ), and a number of other research approaches. However, the strategic stages and choices of the emergent design donot need to be identified and explained. Nor does it imply that all data or findings need to be fully explicable verbally. One of the reasons for choosing arts-based methods, although not the only one, is to allow the operation of aesthetic and subconscious understandings as well as conscious and verbalized ones. That is part of the epistemological justification for choosing an arts-based approach. The ambivalences and pregnant possibilities that result may be considered valued gains from the choice of research tools, and their presence simply needs to be identified, together with explication of the boundaries of how such ambivalence and possibilities relate to the research question.

Different Kinds of Purpose

The sections of this article examine common and different areas of purpose for which arts-based research is frequently used, arranging them into three clusters and discussing some of the possibilities within each one.

The first, and perhaps largest, cluster of purposes for using arts-based research is to investigate some social (in the broadest sense of the word) issue. Such issues might, for example, include woman’s rights, school absenteeism, gang membership, cross-cultural encounters, classroom relationships, experiences of particular programs, problems in language acquisition. The methodological choices involved in this group of purposes have been repeatedly addressed (e.g., Boal, 1979 ; O’Brien & Donelan, 2008 ; Finley, 2005 ; Leavy, 2017 ; Prosser, 2011 ; Wang & Burns, 1997 ) in discussions of the use of arts-based approaches to the social sciences. The intention for using arts-based tools is to open up different, and hopefully more empowering, options for exploring the specific problem or issue, and for expressing participants’ perspectives in ways that can bypass participants’ discomfort with words or unconscious compliance with dominant discourses, or perhaps to present findings in ways that better reveal their dynamics and complexity than written reports.

Another smaller, but important, cluster of purposes is to research art-making processes or completed art works. For example, a theater director (Smithner, 2010 ) investigates the critical decisions she made in selecting and weaving together separate performance works into a theatrical collage. Or, a researcher (O’Donoghue, 2011 ) investigates how a conceptual artist working with film and video enquires into social, political, and cultural issues and how he shapes his work to provoke viewers to develop specific understandings. These kinds of studies explore the how and why of art-making, focusing on the makers’ intentions, their manipulation of the elements and affordances of their specific art field, and often engage with aesthetic as well as sociocultural dimensions of analysis. Often such studies are presented as narratives or analytic essays, and it is the subject matter of the research that constitutes the arts basis. Sometimes, such studies find expression in new artworks, as is the case in Merita Mita’s film made about the work of painter Ralph Hotere (Mita, 2001 ), which interlays critical analyses, documentation of process, interviews, and pulsating images of the artworks.

The third cluster involves research about teaching, therapy, or community development through one or more of the arts. Here arts are primarily the media of teaching and learning. For example, when drama is the teaching medium, the teacher may facilitate the class by taking a fictional role within the narrative that provokes students to plan, argue, or take action. Students may be prompted to use roles, create improvisations, explore body representations of ideas or conflicts, and explore contentious problems in safely fictitious contexts. Because it examines both work within an art form and changes in learners’ or community members’ understandings of other issues, this cluster overlaps somewhat with the two previous clusters. However, it is also building a body of its own traditions.

One strong tradition is the documentation of process. For example, Burton, Lepp, Morrison, and O’Toole ( 2015 ) report two decades of projects, including Dracon and Cooling Conflict , which have used drama strategies as well as formal theoretical teaching to address conflict and bullying. They have documented the specific strategies used, discussed their theoretical bases, and acknowledged the evidence on which they base their claims about effectiveness of the strategies in building understanding about and reducing bullying. The strategies used involved use of role and improvisation and what the authors call an enhanced form of Boal’s Forum Theatre. Other examples include the Risky Business Project (O’Brien & Donelan, 2008 ), a series of programs involving marginalized youth in dance, drama, music, theater performance, stand-up comedy, circus, puppetry, photography, visual arts, and creative writing; explorations of cross-cultural understandings through drama processes (Greenwood, 2005 ); the teaching of English as a second language in Malaysia through teacher-in-role and other drama processes (Mohd Nawi, 2014 ); working with traditional arts to break down culturally bound ways of seeing the world (Stanley, 2014 ); and the training of a theater-for-development team to use improvisational strategies to address community problems (Okagbue, 2002 ). While the strategies are arts processes and the analysis of their effect addresses aesthetic dimensions of arts as well as cognitive and behavioral ones, the reporting of these projects is primarily within the more traditional verbal and discursive forms of qualitative research.

Sometimes the reporting takes a more dramatic turn. Mullens and Wills ( 2016 ) report and critically analyze Re-storying Disability Through the Arts , an event that sought to create space for dialogue between students, researchers, artists, educators, and practitioners with different involvements or interests in disability arts. They begin their report by re-creating a scene within the workshop that captures some of the tensions evoked, and follow this with a critical commentary on three community-based art practices that engage in a strategy of re-storying disability. They present arts as means to “counter powerful cultural narratives that regulate the lives and bodies of disabled people” (Mullens & Wills, 2016 , p. 5). Barrett ( 2014 ) reports a project, informed by an a/r/tography methodology, which utilized the classroom teaching of the prescribed arts curriculum to allow students to explore evolving understandings of identity and community. Montages of photographs are a central component in the report, as is a series of images that illustrate Barrett’s reflections on her own role within the investigation.

Using Art to Research Social Issues: Collecting Data

Within a social science research project, art processes might be used to collect data, to carry out analysis and interpretation, or to present findings. Perhaps the most common use is to collect data. The process of photovoice (Wang & Burns, 1997 ), for example, gives participants cameras and asks them to capture images that they consider as significant elements of the topic being investigated. Graffiti might be used to prompt absentee students to discuss their perceptions of schooling. Body sculptures, freeze frames, and hot seating are examples of drama strategies that could be used to facilitate reflection and debate about cross-cultural encounters, feelings about hospitalization, experiences of domestic violence, or an array of other topics.

In each case the art produced becomes the basis for further discussion. This process is quite different from historical concepts of art therapy, where the therapist would give expert insight into what a patient’s artwork means; here it is the participants who give the explanation, perhaps independently or perhaps through dialogue with other participants and the researcher. The embodied experience of construction provides a platform and a challenge to talking in ways that are more thoughtful and more honest than through a conventionally structured verbal interview. The talk after making is important, but the art products are not merely precursors to verbal data, they are concrete points of references to which both participants and researchers can refer and can use to prompt further introspection or deconstruction. The process of making, moreover, is one that allows time for reflection and self-editing along the way and so may yield more truthful and complex answers than those that might be given instantly in an interview. Participants who are second language speakers or who lack the vocabulary or theoretical constructs to express complex feelings, reactions, or beliefs can be enabled to use physicalization to create a bridge between what they know or feel wordlessly inside them and an external expression that can be read by others.

The art tools available for such data gathering are as varied as the tools used by artists for making art. They might include drawing, collage, painting, sculpting materials or bodies, singing, orchestration, Lego construction, movement improvisation, creation of texts, photography, graffiti, role creation, and/or spatial positioning.

Art Processes as Tools for Analysis

Art processes can also be used to analyze and interpret data. Within qualitative paradigms, the processes of collecting and interpretation of data often overlap. This is also true of arts-based research. For instance, Greenwood ( 2012 ) reported on a group of experienced Bangladeshi educators who came to New Zealand to complete their Masters. While they were proficient in English, they found colloquial language challenging, struggling often to find words with the right social or emotional connotations at the speed of conversation. In previous discussions, they often looked to each other for translation. A teaching workshop, held as an illustration of arts-based research, addressed the research question: what have been your experiences as international students? A small repertoire of drama strategies, particularly freeze frames with techniques for deconstructing and refining initial offers, short animations, and narrative sequencing were used. These prompted participants to recall and show personal experiences, to critically view and interpret one another’s representations, and to further refine their images to clarify their intended meaning. The participants flung themselves into the challenge with alacrity and flamboyance and created images of eagerness, hope, new relationships, frustration, failed communication, anger, dejection, unexpected learning, and achievement. They also actively articulated ideas as we deconstructed the images and, through debate, co-constructed interpretations of what was being shown in the work and what it meant in terms of their experience, individual and shared, of overseas study. The interweaving of making, reflection, discussion, and further refinement is intrinsic to process drama; as a research method, it affords a means of interweaving data collection and collaborative analysis. In this case the participants also debated aspects of the validity of the process as research, raising questions about subjectivity in interpretation, about the nature of crystallization (Richardson, 1994 ), about informed consent, and about co-construction of narratives. Analysis shifted from being the task of an outsider researcher to one carried out, incrementally and experimentally, by insider participants. While the researcher held the initial power to focus the work, participants’ physical entry into the work, and their interrogation of the images that were created constituted a choice of how much they would share and contribute, and so they became active and sometimes playful partners in the research. This approach to analysis shares many features with participatory action research (Brydon-Miller et al., 2011 ), both in eliciting the agency of participants and in evolving a process of analysis that is interwoven with the gathering of data from preceding action and with the planning of further investigative cycles of action.

The work of Boal is perhaps one of the best known examples of the use of an art process, in this case theater, as a means of analysis of data. Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed ( 1979 ) details a series of strategies for deconstruction and collaborative analysis. For example, in the process he calls image theatre , participants select a local oppressive problem that they seek to resolve. They create and discuss images that exemplify experience of the problem and their idealized solutions (the data); they then analyze their images to find where power resides and how it is supported. Boal’s theater process calls for experimentation with further images that explore scenarios where power could become shared to some extent and could allow further action by those who experience the oppression. The process finishes with consequential explorations of the first step to be taken by participants as a means to work toward an equilibrium of power. Boal, as the title of his book, Theatre of the Oppressed , acknowledges, draws on the work of his Braziailan compatriot, Freire, and particularly on his concept of conscientization (Freire, 1970 , 1972 ). Boal’s process for analyzing experiences of oppression is not so much a direct action plan as a means of analyzing the mechanisms of specific conditions of oppression and the potential, however limited, for agency to resolve the oppression. The sequenced strategies of creating and discussing alternative images of oppression, power relationships, and action enable participants to deconstruct the socio-cultural reality that shapes their lives and to gain awareness of their capacity to transform it.

Art as a Means to Present Findings

There is a large and growing body of research that presents findings in arts forms. A few examples are briefly discussed.

After collecting data, through interviews and official communications from participants in a case where a district school was being threatened with closure, Owen ( 2009 ) commissioned a composer to write a score for sections of his transcripts and create a community opera. He expressed the hope that this would “transform their tiny stories into noisy histories” (p. 3). Part of the data was sung at a conference I attended. I was struck by the shift in power. What I might have regarded as dull data in a PowerPoint presentation now became a compelling articulation of experiences and aspirations and a dynamic debate between personal lives and authoritarian policy.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt project (Morris, 2011 ; Yardlie & Langley, 1995 ) is frequently described as the world’s greatest piece of community folk art. A claim can be made that, while each panel in the quilt is a product of folk art, the collation of the quilt in its enormity is a work of conceptual art that juxtaposes the fragility and isolation of individual loss with the overwhelming global impact of the AIDS epidemic. The quilt can also be seen as research that visually quantifies the death toll through AIDS in Western world communities and that qualitatively investigates the life stories and values of those who died through the perceptions of those who loved them.

A number of museums throughout the world present visual and kinaesthetic accounts of social and historical research. Well-known examples are the Migration Museum in Melbourne, the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, and the Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism in Munich. A less securely established exhibition is that of images of the Australian Aboriginal Stolen Generation that was collected by the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation to educate community and schoolchildren, “but only had the funding to showcase the exhibit for one night” (Diss, 2017 ). These and many other exhibitions create visual and experiential environments where the data of history can be not only seen and read but also felt.

In a similar way to how these exhibitions use actual archival photographs, theater may use the exact words of interviews to re-tell real stories. In making Verbatim , Brandt and Harcourt ( 1994 ) collated the words from 30 interviews with convicted murderers, their families, and the families of murder victims. “We went into the prisons to find out what the story was that we were going to tell, and that was the story that emerged from the material we collected,” Harcourt explained (White, 2013 ). “Not only the content, but also the form emerged from that context. We didn’t go in having decided we were going to make a solo show. Form emerged from the experience of the prison system.”

A frequently used form is that of ethnodrama (Mienczakowski, 1995 ; Saldaña, 2008 ). Ethnodrama presents data in a theatrical form: using stage, role, and sometimes lighting and music. Saldaña ( 2008 ) explains that ethnodrama maintains “close allegiance to the lived experiences of real people while presenting their voices through an artistic medium” (p. 3) and argues that the goals are not only aesthetic, they also possess emancipatory potential for motivating social change within participants and audiences.

Sometimes the ethnographic material is further manipulated in the presentation process. Conrad ( 2012 ) describes her research into the Native program at the Alberta youth corrections center in play form as “an ethnographic re-presentation of the research—a creative expression of the research findings” (p. xii). Her play jumps through time, creating fragments of action, and is interspersed by video scenes that provide alternative endings that could result from choices made by the characters. Conrad explains her choice of medium: “Performance has the potential to reach audiences in ways beyond intellectual understanding, through engaging other ways of knowing that are empathetic, emotional, experiential, and embodied, with the potential for radically re-envisioning social relations” (p. xiii).

Belliveau ( 2015 ) created a performative research about his work in teaching Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in an elementary school. He interwove excerpts of students’ performances from the Shakespearean text with excerpts of their discussions about the issues of power, pride, love, and other themes in a new performance work that illustrated as well as explained primary students’ response to Shakespeare. He later presented a keynote at the IDEA (International Drama in Education Association) conference in Paris where he performed his discussion of this and other work with young students. Similarly, Lutton’s ( 2016 ) doctoral research explored the work and challenges of selected international drama educators using imagination and role play. In her final performance of her research, she took the role of an archivist’s assistant at a fictitious Museum of Educational Drama and Applied Theatre to provide “an opportunity for drama practitioners to use their skills and knowledge of drama pedagogy to tell their own stories” (Lutton, p. 36). She states that her choice of research tool embraces theatricality, enabling the embodiment of participants’ stories, the incorporation of critical reflection and of aesthetic knowledge (p. 36).

The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil , developed by John McGrath and the 7:84 Theatre Company, recounts the history of economic exploitation of the Scottish people, from the evictions that followed the clearances for the farming of Cheviot sheep, through the development of Highland stag hunts, to the capitalist domination of resources in the 1970s oil boom. Within a traditional ceilidh form it tells stories, presents arguments, and uses caricature, satire, and parody. The play is the result of research and of critical analysis of movements of power and economic interests. It is also a very effective instrument of political persuasion: McGrath gives the dispossessed crofters a language that tugs at our empathy whereas that of the landlords provokes our antagonism. Is this polemics or simple historic truth? Does the dramatic impact of the play unreasonably capture our intellects? And if the facts that are presented are validated by other accounts of history does it matter if it does? What is, what should be, what can be the relationship between research and the evocation, even manipulation of emotions?

Emotion—and Its Power

In as much as arts offer different ways of knowing the world, their use at various stages of research has the power to influence both what we come to know and how we know it. Art tools, strategically used, allow access to emotions and visceral responses as well as to conscious ideas. That makes them powerful for eliciting information. It also makes them powerful in influencing audiences.

The photos of the brutality of the police and of the steadfastness of the activists in the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg are examples of powerfully influencing as well as informing data. As well as the events that are recorded, the faces and the bodies speak through the photos. Their exhibition in blown-up size at eye level together with film footage and artifacts create a compellingly powerful response in viewers. Like many others, I came out of the museum emotionally drained and confirmed, even strengthened, in my ideological beliefs. The power of the exhibition had first sharpened and then consolidated my understandings. Was this because of the power of the facts presented in the exhibition, or was it because of the power of their presentation ? Or was it both? When the issue presented is one like apartheid, I am not afraid of having my awareness influenced in multiple ways: I believe I already have an evidence-informed position on the subject. I also applaud the power of the exhibition to inform and convince those who might not yet have reached a position. But what if the issue was a different one? Perhaps one which I was more uncertain about? Might it then seem that the emotional power of the exhibition gave undue weight to the evidence?

The issue here is not a simple one. The presentation is not only the reporting of findings: it is also art. The researcher (in the artist) stays true to the data; the artist (in the researcher) arranges data for effect and affect. Conrad explicitly states her hope that her choice of presentation mode will add impact to her research findings: she wants the presentation of her research about youth in detention centers to engender more empathetic understandings of their experiences and lead, in turn, to more constructive attitudes toward their needs. By putting their words to music, Owen wants his audience to listen more attentively to opinions of the stakeholders in the schools threatened with closure. McGrath wants his audience to side with those dispossessed by the combined power of capital and law. The Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation plans to emotionally move as well as to inform its community. In writing Broadwood , I meticulously presented both sides of the dispute, I deliberately placed music and metaphor at the service of Maori language, and I deliberately used the spatial suggestiveness of the stage to evoke possibilities in the ending. The boy is alone in the library while his classmates are on the marae listening to an elder explain the history of their meetinghouse. The elder gives them an ancient whalebone weapon to hold, the students pass it among themselves, then hold it out across space to the boy. The boy stands, takes half a cautious step toward them and then stops; the lights go down. I intended the audience to complete the action in their subconscious.

In each of these cases, the art form of the presentation allows the artist/researcher to manipulate affect as well as critical cognition. To my mind, this is not simply another iteration of the argument between subjectivity and objectivity in research. Many contemporary approaches to research openly recognize that knowledge is mediated by context, experience, and social and historical discourses as well as by individuals’ personal interpretation (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 ; Ellis, 2004 ). It is shaped by what is left out as well as by what is included. The practice of careful and scrupulous reflexivity is a way of acknowledging and bounding the subjectivity of the researcher (Altheide & Johnson, 2011 ; Ellingson, 2011 ). The researcher-who-is-artist draws on a subconscious as well as a conscious sense of how things fit together, and constructs meaning subconsciously as well as consciously, manipulating affect and effect in the process. Perhaps all researchers do so to some extent. For instance, the deliberately invisible authors of much quantitative research, who allow the passive voice to carry much of the reporting, who triangulate and define limitation, create an effect of fair-minded and dependable authority. The affect is not necessarily misleading, and it is something that readers of research have learned to recognize. However, the researcher-who-is-artist can draw on the rich repertoire of an art field that already operates in the domain of the aesthetic as well as of the critically cognitive, in spaces that are liminal as well those that are defined. It is arguable that readers of research still need to recognize and navigate through those spaces. Arguably, the challenge exists not only in the field of research: it is present in all the media that surrounds our daily lives.

A/r/tography and Examination of Places Between

The challenge of exploring liminal spaces of intention, process, explanation, effect, and affect is seriously taken up by the emergent discipline of a/r/tography . The backslashes in the term speak of fracture; they also denote the combined authorial roles of artist, researcher, and teacher. Springgay, Irwin, and Kind ( 2005 ) explain that a/r/tography is deliberately introspective and does not seek conclusions: rather it plays with connections between art and text and seeks to capture the embodied experience of exploring self and the world. Irwin et al. ( 2006 ) state: “Together, the arts and education complement, resist, and echo one another through rhizomatic relations of living inquiry” (p. 70). A/r/tography is explicitly positioned as a practice-based and living inquiry: it explores but resists attempting to define the spaces between artist, teacher, and researcher, and so implicitly rejects boundaries between these roles. It conceptualizes inquiry as a continuing experiential process of encounter between ideas, art media, context, meaning, and evolving representations. At the same time as it blurs distinctions, it teases out interrelationships: it offers art inquiry as something that is purposeful but unfixed, and art knowing as something that is personally and socially useful, but at best only partially and temporarily describable, never definable. This is one reason why its proponents explain it as a substantively different and new methodology outside the existing frameworks of qualitative research.

A/r/tography emerged out of the field of art education, with the explicit aim to extend the opportunities afforded by education in the arts, and to develop means to record and report the complex facets of learning and teaching in the arts. Consequently its language may be experienced, by readers who are outside the discipline, as highly abstract, deliberately ambiguous, and even esoteric: it seems to speak, as many research disciplines do, primarily to others in its own field. However, its broad principles have been picked up, and perhaps adapted, by practitioners who seek to explore the processes of their students’ learning through the arts and the evolving understandings they develop. For instance, Barrett and Greenwood ( 2013 ) report exploration of the epistemological third space through which place-conscious education and visual arts pedagogy can be interwoven and through which students, many of whom do not aspire to become artists, can use art-making to re-imagine and re-mark their understandings of their physical and social context and of their relationship with community. The value of this kind of research is posed in terms of the insights it affords rather than its capacity for presenting authoritative conclusions.

A Conference Debate, and the Politics of Research

Whether the provision of insights is enough to make art-making into research is a question that is frequently and sometimes fiercely contested. One such debate took place at a European conference I recently attended. It occurred in an arts-based research stream, and it began with the presentation of two films. The films were relatively short, and a discussion followed and became increasingly heated. Personally, I liked the films. The first reported a dance process that became an undergraduate teaching text. The second, in layers of imagery and fragments of dialogue, explored the practice of two artists. However, I was not sure what the added value was in calling either research. I saw art responding to art, and that seemed valuable and interesting enough. Why was the construct of research being privileged? The filmmakers defended the claim to research on the grounds that there was inquiry, on the grounds that art spoke in languages that were best discussed through art, and on the grounds that research was privileged in their institutions. Then a respected professor of fine arts put forward more direct criticism. Research, he argued, needed to make explicit the decisions that were made in identifying and reporting findings so that these would be accessible for peer review. Neither film, he said, did so. Defenses from the audience were heated. Then another senior art educator argued that art itself could not just be self-referential: it had to open a space for others to enter. The debate continued in corridors long after the session ended.

That the criticisms were unrelenting seemed an indication of how much was at stake. The space held by arts-based research within the European academic congregation is still somewhat fragile. The arts-based network was formed because of advocates’ passionate belief in the extended possibilities that arts-based methods offer, and this year again it expressed its eagerness to receive contributions in film and other art media as well as PowerPoint and verbal presentations. However, the network also saw itself as a custodian of rigor.

The participants in the session re-performed an argument that lingers at the edges of arts-based research. At the far ends of the spectrum, art and research are readily recognizable, and when art is borrowed as a tool in research, the epistemological and methodological assumptions are explicable. But the ground is more slippery when art and research intersect more deeply. When is the inquiry embedded within art, and when does it become research? Is it useful to attempt demarcations? What is lost from art or from research if demarcations are not attempted? The questions, as well as possible answers, are, as Eisner suggested, political as well as philosophical and methodological.

The doing of research and its publication have become big academic business. Universities around the world are required to report their academics’ research outputs to gain funding. My university, for example, is subject to a six-yearly round of assessment of research performance, based primarily on published and on funded research outputs. Each academic’s outputs are categorized and ranked, and the university itself is ranked and funded, in comparison with the other universities in the country. There is pressure on each academic to maximize research publications, even at the cost, it often seems, of other important academic activities, such as teaching. The competitive means of ranking also increases contestations about what is real research, serving both as a stimulus for positioning differing forms of inquiry as research and as a guarded gateway that permits some entries and denies others. Politicians and policymakers, in their turn, favor and fund research that can provide them with quotable numbers or clear-cut conclusions. Arts-based research still battles for a place within this politico-academic ground, although there appears to be growing acceptance of the use of art tools as means to elicit data.

Site for Possibilities—and Questions

The politics of research do matter, but for researchers who are committed to doing useful research, there are other factors to consider when choosing research approaches. These include the potentialities of the tools, the matter that is to be investigated, and the skills and practice preferences of the researcher.

The emergence and development of processes of arts-based research are grounded in belief that there are many ways of knowing oneself and the world, and these include emotions and intuitive perceptions as well as intellectual cognition. The epistemology of arts-based research is based on understandings that color, space, sound, movement, facial expression, vocal tone, and metaphor are as important in expressing and understanding knowledge as the lexical meanings of words. It is based on understandings that symbols, signs, and patterns are powerful means of communication, and that they are culturally and contextually shaped and interpreted. Arts-based research processes tolerate, even sometimes celebrate, ambiguity and ambivalence. They may also afford license to manipulate emotions to evoke empathy or direct social action.

The use of arts-based processes for eliciting participants’ responses considerably increases researchers’ repertoire for engaging participants and for providing them with means of expression that allow them to access feelings and perceptions that they might not initially be able to put into words as well as giving them time and strategies for considering their responses. The use of arts-based processes for analysis and representation allow opportunities for multidimensional, sensory, and often communal explorations of the meaning of what has been researched. It also presents new challenges to receivers of research who need to navigate their way not only through the overt ambiguities and subjective expression, but also through the invisible layers of affect that are embedded in art processes.

The challenges signal continuing areas of discussion, and perhaps work, for both arts-based researchers and for the wider research community. Does the use of art in representation of research findings move beyond the scope of critical peer review? Or do we rather need to develop new languages and strategies for such review? Do we need critical and recursive debate about when art becomes research and when it does not? Are the ambiguities and cognitive persuasions that are inherent in arts-based representations simply other, and useful, epistemological stances? Does the concept of research lose its meaning if it is stretched too far? Does art, which already has a useful role in interpreting and even shaping society, need to carve out its position as research? Does the entry of arts-based research into the arena of research call for revisions to the way we consider ethics? How do the procedures of institutional ethics committees need to be adapted to accommodate the engagement of the human body as well as the emergent design and ambiguities of the arts-based research processes? What are the more complex responsibilities of arts-based researchers toward their participants, particularly in terms of cultural protocols, reciprocity of gains, and the manipulation of emotions and cognition through visually or dramatically powerful presentations?

The already existing and expanding contribution of arts-based researchers argues vigorously for the place of arts processes in our congregations of research discussion and production. Quite simply, the arts address aspects of being human that are not sufficiently addressed by other methodologies. They are needed in our repertoire of tools for understanding people and the world. However, like other research approaches, they bring new challenges that need to be recognized and debated.

Further Reading

• Belliveau, G. (2015). Research-based theatre and a/r/tography: Exploring arts-based educational research methodologies . p-e-r-f-o-r-m-a-n-c-e , 2 (1–2).
• Bharucha, R. (1993). Theatre and the world: Performance and the politics of culture . London, U.K.: Routledge.
• Boal, A. (1979). Theatre of the oppressed . London, U.K.: Pluto Press.
• Brandt, W. S. , & Harcourt, M. (1994). Verbatim . Wellington: Victoria University Press.
• Conrad, D. (2012). Athabasca’s going unmanned . Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.
• Eisner, E. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Greenwood, J. (2012). Arts-based research: Weaving magic and meaning . International Journal of Education & the Arts 13 (Interlude 1).
• Greenwood, J. (2016). The limits of language: A case study of an arts-based research exploration . New Zealand Journal of Research in Performing Arts and Education: Nga Mahi a Rehua , 6 , 88–100.
• Irwin, R. (2013). Becoming/tography. Studies in Art Education , 54 (1), 198–215.
• Leavy, P. (Ed.). (2017). Handbook of arts-based research . New York, NY: Guilford Press.
• Margolis, E. , & Pauwels, L. (Eds.). (2011). The SAGE handbook of visual research methods . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• O’Brien, A. , & Donelan, K. (2008). Creative interventions for marginalised youth: The Risky Business project . Monograph 6. City East, Queensland: Drama Australia.
• Saldaña, J. (2008). Ethnodrama and ethnotheatre. In J. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of arts in qualitative research (pp. 195–207). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Wang, C. , & Burns, M. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health Education & Behavior , 24 (3), 369–387.
• Altheide, D. , & Johnson, J. (2011). Reflections on interpretive adequacy in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 581–594). London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Bagley, C. , & Cancienne, M. (Eds.). (2002). Dancing the data . New York, NY: Peter Lang.
• Barrett T. , & Greenwood, J. (2013). Betwixt sights and sites: A third space for understandings and engagement with visual arts education. International Journal of Arts Education , 7 (3), 57–66.
• Barrett, T.-A. (2014). Re-marking places: An a/r/tography project exploring students’ and teachers’ senses of self, place, and community . (Doctoral thesis). University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
• Brecht, B. (1960). The Caucasian chalk circle . London, U.K.: Methuen.
• Bruner, G. (1990). Acts of meaning . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Brydon-Miller, M. , Karl, M. , Maguire, P. , Noffke, S. , & Sabhlok, A. (2011). Jazz and the banyan tree: Roots and riffs on participatory action research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 387–400). London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Burton, B. , Lepp, M. , Morrison, M. , & O’Toole, J. (2015). Acting to manage conflict and bullying through evidence-based strategies . London, U.K.: Springer.
• Cremin, H. , Mason, C. , & Busher, H. (2011). Problematising pupil voice using visual methods: Findings from a study of engaged and disaffected pupils in an urban secondary school. British Education Research Journal , 33 (4), 585–603.
• Denzin, N. , & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.). (2011). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (4th ed.). London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Diss, K. (2017). Stolen Generation picture collection in WA looking for new home . ABC News.
• Eisner, E. (1998). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.
• Ellingson, L. (2011). Analysis and representation across the curriculum. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 595–610). London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography . Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
• Finley, S. (2005). Arts-based inquiry: Performing revolutionary pedagogy. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 681–694). London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Freire, P. (1970). Cultural action for freedom . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.
• Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed ( M. B. Ramos , Trans.). Middlesex, U.K.: Penguin Education.
• Gallagher, K. (2014). Why theatre matters: Urban youth, engagement and a pedagogy of the real . Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
• Gardiner, R. (2015). Troubling method. In Gender, authenticity, and leadership (pp. 108–129). London, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Gauntlett, D. (2007). Creative explorations: New approaches to identities and audiences . New York, NY: Routledge.
• Gray, R. , & Sinding, C. (2002). Standing ovation: Performing social science research about cancer . Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
• Greenwood, J. (1995). Broadwood: Na wai te reo? Performance. Northland Youth Theatre. Whangarei, New Zealand.
• Greenwood, J. (2005). Journeying into the third space: A study of how theatre can be used to interpret the space between cultures. Youth Theatre Journal , 19 , 1–16.
• Greenwood J. (2011). Aesthetic learning and learning through the aesthetic. In S. Schonmann (Ed.), Key concepts in theatre/drama education (pp. 47–52). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.
• Guba, E. (1996). What happened to me on the road to Damascus. In L. Heshuius & K. Ballard (Eds.), From positivism to interpretivism and beyond: Tales of transformation in educational and social research (pp. 43–49). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
• Halperin, D. (2003). The normalization of queer theory. Journal of Homosexuality , 45 (2–4), 339–343.
• Hamera, J. (2011). Performance ethnography. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 317–329). London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Irwin, R. (2013). Becoming a/r/tography. Studies in Art Education , 54 (1), 198–215.
• Irwin, R. , Beer, R. , Springgay, S. , Grauer, K. , Xiong, G. , & Bickel, B. (2006). The rhizomatic relations of a/r/tography . Studies in Art Education , 48 (1), 70–88.
• Lutton, J. (2016). In the realms of fantasy: Finding new ways to tell our stories . New Zealand Journal of Research in Performing Arts and Education: Nga Mahi a Rehua , 6 , 27–37.
• Mienczakowski, J. (1995). The theater of ethnography: The reconstruction of ethnography into theater with emancipatory potential. Qualitative Inquiry , 1 (3), 360–375.
• Mita, M. (2001). Hotere . Documentary film. Christchurch, New Zealand: Paradise Films.
• Mohd Nawi, A. (2014). Applied drama in English language learning (Doctoral thesis). University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
• Morris, C. (Ed).(2011). Remembering the AIDS quilt . East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
• Mullens, M. , & Wills, R. (2016). Re-storying disability through the arts: Providing counterpoint to mainstream narratives. New Zealand Journal of Research in Performing Arts and Education: Nga Mahi a Rehua , 6 , 5–16.
• Neilson, A. (2008). Disrupting privilege, identity, and meaning: A reflexive dance of environmental education . Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.
• O’Donoghue, D. (2011). Doing and disseminating visual research: Visual arts-based approaches. In E. Margolis & L. Pauwels (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of visual research methods (pp. 638–650). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Okagbue, O. (2002). A drama of their lives: Theatre‐for‐development in Africa, Contemporary Theatre Review , 12 (1–2), 79–92.
• Owen, N. (2009). Closing schools for the future . Paper presented at the International Conference on Educational Research for Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, May 13–15.
• Picasso, P. (1937). Guernica . Painting. Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain.
• Preissle, J. (2011). Qualitative futures: Where we might go from where we’ve been. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 685–698). London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Prosser, J. (2011). Visual methodology: Towards a more seeing research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 479–495). London, U.K.: SAGE.
• Richardson, L. (1994). Writing, a method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 516–529). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
• Riessman, C. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Rittel, H. , & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences , 4 , 155–159.
• Saldaña, J. (2008). Ethnodrama and ethnotheatre. In J. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of arts in qualitative research (pp. 195–207). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Smith, L. (2014). Social justice, transformation, and indigenous methodologies. In R. E. Rinehart , K. Barbour , & C. Pope (Eds.), Ethnographic worldviews: Transformations and social justice (pp. 15–20). London, U.K.: Springer.
• Smithner, N. (2010). The women’s project: A director’s perspective on creating a performance collage. ArtsPraxis , 2 , 12–21.
• Springgay, S. , Irwin, R. , & Kind, S. (2005). A/r/tography as living inquiry through art and text. Qualitative Inquiry , 11 (6), 897–912.
• St. Pierre, E. (2004). Refusing alternative: A science of contestation. Qualitative Inquiry , 10 (1), 130–139.
• Stanley, F. (2014). Re-framing traditional arts: Creative process and culturally responsive learning (Doctoral thesis). University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
• Sullivan, G. (2010). Art practice as research: Inquiry in visual arts (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks CA: SAGE.
• Wang, C. , & Burns, M. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health, Education, & Behaviour , 24 (3), 369–387.
• White, D. (2013). Inside looking out: Miranda Harcourt on “Verbatim” and “Portraits” . The Pantograph Punch .
• Yardlie, A. , & Langley, K. (1995). Unfolding: The story of the Australian and New Zealand AIDS quilt projects . Carlton: McPhee Gribble.

Related Articles

• Music Education Research
• Creative Writers as Arts Educators
• A/r/tography
• Intercultural Arts
• Aesthetics and Education

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Education. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 08 June 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [66.249.64.20|195.190.12.77]
• 195.190.12.77

Character limit 500 /500

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Arts-based research approaches to studying mechanisms of change in the creative arts therapies.

• 1 Department of Creative Arts Therapies, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States
• 2 Department of Art Education, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
• 3 Mary Pappert School of Music and School of Nursing, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

The purpose of this preliminary qualitative research study is to explore the role and function of multiple dynamic interactive aesthetic and intersubjective phenomena in the creative arts therapies process relative to transformation in perception, behavior, relationship, and well-being. A group of doctoral students and faculty studied these phenomena in an analogous creative arts therapies laboratory context using a method called Intrinsic Arts-Based Research. Intrinsic Arts-Based Research is a systematic study of psychological, emotional, relational, and arts-based phenomena, parallel to those emergent in the creative arts therapies, using individual and collective intrinsic immersive and reflective experience in combination with qualitative and arts-based research methods. Our primary goal was to simulate the creative arts therapies experience in order to identify, document, and describe the complex transformative phenomena that occur at the nexus of arts-based expression, reflection, and relationships in the arts therapies. For the purposes of this paper transformation is defined as “…. a significant reconfiguration of perception and thought resulting in the lessening of psychic restraint and pain, allowing for the emergence of new psychological perspectives that contribute to living a more creative life” ( Gerber et al., 2012 , p. 45). Through a deductive thematic analysis of written accounts of these simulated creative arts therapies experiences by participant/researchers in the laboratory we identified three primary dynamic and interactive broad constructs that together, with more specific modifying themes, might account for and describe change within the creative arts therapies. These broad dynamic interactive themes are: ruptures, resolutions, and transformation; relationship and intersubjectivity; and, arts-based expressive processes. The more specific modifying themes include: dialectical rupture and resolution, relational attunements and ruptures, imaginational flow, transcendence and ruptures, sensory/kinesthetic/embodied ways of knowing, and intersubjective transcendence . We propose that change in the creative arts therapies is driven more by a dynamic system of interactive phenomena the varying combinations of which create conditions for relational attunement, imagination, dialectical tensions and creative resolutions, and the ultimately creative transformation.

Introduction

“ In the experience of art we see a genuine experience… induced by the work which does not leave him who has it unchanged… so we hope to better understand what kind of truth it is that encounters us there” ( Gadamer, 1975/2003 , p. 100).

The purpose of this preliminary qualitative research study is to explore the role and function of multiple dynamic aesthetic and intersubjective phenomena in the creative arts therapies that might be considered mechanisms of change. A group of doctoral students and faculty have been studying these phenomena in an analogous creative arts therapies laboratory context using a method called Intrinsic Arts-Based Research. Intrinsic Arts-Based Research is a systematic study of psychological, emotional, relational and arts-based phenomena using individual and collective intrinsic immersive and reflective experience in combination with qualitative and arts-based research methods. Our primary goal is to simulate the creative arts therapies experience in order to identify, document, and describe the complex transformative phenomena that occur at the nexus of arts-based expression, reflection, and relationships in the arts therapies. For the purposes of this paper transformation is defined as “…. a significant reconfiguration of perception and thought resulting in the lessening of psychic restraint and pain, allowing for the emergence of new psychological perspectives that contribute to living a more creative life” ( Gerber et al., 2012 , p. 45).

Since the beginning of this project 8 years ago, we have continually engaged in an ongoing critical reflection and evaluation of our underlying philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality and knowledge for our creative arts therapies fields. Through the examination of our philosophical assumptions we created and adopted an aesthetic intersubjective paradigm ( Chilton et al., 2015 ). This worldview is predicated upon the philosophical assumptions that our perceptions, relationships, and behavior are conceived and reside in dynamic co-constructed pluralistic intersubjective realities in which an aesthetic epistemic comprises the knowledge and communication. We define aesthetics as pre-verbal sensory-based, embodied perceptual and imaginal knowledge that emerges and acquires meaning in intersecting historical and current intersubjective narratives ( Cooper, 1997 ; Harris-Williams, 2010 ; Brown, 2011 ; Chilton et al., 2015 ). Intersubjectivity is defined as a pre-verbal unconscious phenomenon wherein “jointly constructed narrative… ascribes meaning to experience for which no language previously existed” ( Brown, 2011 , p. 1) and “communication and meaning making between two intrapsychic worlds… results in changes within each member…” ( Brown, 2011 , p. 109). Intersubjectivity emphasizes the shared lived experience in which heightened empathy and attunement allows one to enter the emotional experience of another in order to co-construct a new, re-imagined, and often transformative life narrative ( Stern, 2005 ).

These ontological and epistemic foundations of the creative arts therapies represent the archeology of the most profound human emotional and relational constructs essential to understanding the nuances and complexities of the human experience. Implicit in the creative arts therapies worldview is that aesthetic intersubjective ways of being and knowing exist on the periphery of consciousness inaccessible through traditional investigative methods or verbal discourse. In creative arts therapies practice we use our arts forms to elicit the expression of these most profound experiences, construct personal narratives, and enhance self-awareness within a carefully constructed and emotionally held relationship; while in research, we use arts-based methods for purposes of systematic inquiry into creative arts therapies phenomena.

Based upon our adopted worldview and our objectives to study transformative processes in the creative arts therapies, we selected a comparable arts-based research philosophical and methodological approach to investigate these complex aesthetic intersubjective human phenomena. The arts-based research approach we adopted is one in which the arts are used as the primary method of systematic investigation and analysis throughout the research process ( Hervey, 2000 ; McNiff, 2008 ; Kossak, 2012 ; Viega, 2016 ) “…as a primary way of understanding and examining experience…” ( McNiff, 2008 , p. 29) in the study of the multi-dimensional psychological and socio-cultural human condition ( Gerber and Myers-Coffman, 2017 ). Furthermore, Barone and Eisner (2012) assert that “[arts] based research is an effort to extend beyond the limiting constraints of discursive communication in order to express meanings that otherwise would be ineffable” (1).

To implement our arts-based research study of the therapeutic and transformational phenomena in the creative arts therapies we developed a creative arts therapies laboratory in which a group of doctoral students and faculty simulated the creative arts therapies and studied the parallel individual and collective arts-based intersubjective processes. We created and used what we call an intrinsic arts-based research method ( Hagman, 2005 ; Levine, 2005 ; Gerber et al., 2012 ; Chilton et al., 2015 ; Gerber and Scotti, 2017 ). Within the intrinsic arts-based research approach, we used ourselves as participant/researchers to study arts-based relational phenomena as they emerge organically within the intersubjective context paralleling the creative arts therapies process. As participant/researchers, we navigated between the immersive arts-based intersubjective process and reflective analytic procedures documenting our experiences through arts-based expressions, reflective journaling, group discussions, qualitative and arts-based data analysis. The results of our inquiries were analyzed, synthesized, and documented in culminating textual and arts-based projects at the conclusion of each academic term with a retrospective summative analysis at the end of the year.

This article represents a preliminary qualitative analysis of a sampling of these retrospective culminating projects written by doctoral student participant/researchers over the past 8 years who sought to answer the question: “What are the factors that contribute to therapeutic mechanisms, psychological understanding, meaning making, and transformation within the intersubjective arts therapies process?” in this creative arts therapies laboratory course ( Gerber et al., 2012 ; Gerber and Scotti, 2017 ).

In this preliminary phase of the project we have randomly selected eight retrospective de-identified study records representing student culminating projects from the creative arts therapies laboratory course and adopted a deductive or theoretical thematic analytic approach ( Braun and Clarke, 2006 ) to study patterns of evidence relative to transformative experiences. We selected this approach for the explicit purposes of developing and evaluating a coding system based upon exogenous research and theory about transformative phenomena to compare to the heuristic data generated from our intrinsic arts-based and qualitative investigations. Our aim was to determine how our emergent intrinsic phenomena aligned with extrinsic empirical mechanisms of transformation to further understand what creative arts therapies processes contribute to change. To identify deductive thematic concepts for our study, we conducted a review of the literature focused on the definitions of mechanisms of change in general, and mechanisms of change in psychotherapy and the creative arts therapies.

In contemporary scientific research, particularly within the domains of medicine and the physical sciences, mechanisms of change are defined as causal and measurable variables that statistically account for the relationship between a particular therapeutic intervention and outcome ( Kazdin, 2007 ). Kazdin and Nock (2003) stated that mechanisms of change not only represent the causal relationship but also “reflect the processes through which therapeutic change occurs” or “those processes or events that lead to and cause therapeutic change” (1117). According to Kazdin (2007) mechanisms are evaluated based upon principles of association, plausibility, consistency, experimental manipulation, timeline, and gradient ( Kazdin, 2007 ). Petrik and Cronin (2014 , p. 284) resonate with this definition but add that in psychotherapy mechanisms are the “theory driven reason that change occurs in therapy or the how or why of the therapeutic change.” They add, in addressing mechanisms of change in psychotherapy, that the mechanisms inhabit the dynamic interaction between technique, client-therapist processes, and outcomes.

Mechanisms are interconnected with moderators, which are pre-existing and co-existing conditions, and mediators, which are other intervening variables that influence the causal mechanistic effect ( Kazdin and Nock, 2003 ; Johansson and HØglend, 2007 ; Kazdin, 2007 ). A moderator is considered to be a “pre-treatment variable” that relates to “for whom and under what conditions the effects will occur” ( Johansson and HØglend, 2007 , p. 2) such as gender, illness severity, genetic pre-dispositions, family, medical and psychological history, as well as social constructs such community and culture ( Kazdin and Nock, 2003 , p. 1118; Johansson and HØglend, 2007 ). A mediator is an “intervening variable” ( Kazdin, 2007 , p. 3) that represents processes occurring within the individual such as “abilities, functioning, or capacities” and statistically “accounts for the relation between treatment and outcome” ( Johansson and HØglend, 2007 , p. 2; Kazdin, 2007 ). Mediating variables occupy differing “temporal and causal positions” (p. 2) as well as the “mode of operation (direct or indirect)” ( Kazdin and Nock, 2003 , p. 1118) all of which require consideration, measurement, and correlation with the outcomes. In contrast to the physical sciences, the numerous idiosyncratic variables and intangible dynamic processes in psychotherapy make it challenging and perhaps counterproductive to isolate singular cause and effect relationship between process and outcome ( Hayes et al., 2007 ; Petrik and Cronin, 2014 ).

In reviewing what are considered to be mechanisms of change within the psychotherapy literature there is general agreement that aspects of the therapeutic relationship, elements of self-expression, increased levels of consciousness and memory, dialectical tensions, destabilization, ruptures and resolutions, reconfigured and re-storied self-narratives, and self-reflection act as interactive agents of change ( Ogden, 1992 ; Knill, 2005 ; Hayes et al., 2007 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Caddy et al., 2012 ; Forster et al., 2014 ; Van Lith, 2015 ; Haas-Cohen and Clyde Findlay, 2015 ; Lane et al., 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ). Additionally, there are numerous theories that identify multiple neurological, psychological, cultural, social, temporal, and intersubjective factors that moderate and mediate the transformation of thought, perception, emotion, and behavior in psychotherapy within and between these identified mechanisms ( Bollas, 2002 ; Hayes et al., 2007 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Harris-Williams, 2010 ; Brown, 2011 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Forster et al., 2014 ; Haas-Cohen and Clyde Findlay, 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ).

The research in the creative arts therapies related to mechanisms of change is limited in scope and methodology although there are some formative related to mechanisms or phenomena of change. These preliminary theories, in many cases, intersect with those of psychotherapy, suggesting that change occurs within an emotionally attuned therapeutic relationship in which individuals can express themselves through the arts, access and revive memories through sensory and embodied knowledge, gain a sense of safety and relief from tension, reflect and learn about themselves through the therapist/client/arts triadic dialog, progress incrementally through developmental stages, transcend their mental suffering, and enhance their overall psychological and social well-being ( Hayes et al., 2007 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Caddy et al., 2012 ; Forster et al., 2014 ; Haas-Cohen and Clyde Findlay, 2015 ; Lane et al., 2015 ; Van Lith, 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ). Additionally, self-reflection, enhanced levels of consciousness, the necessity for tension, rupture and resolution within a “dialectically attuned” ( Israelstam, 2007 ) therapeutic relationship and the resultant re-imagining and re-creation of personal narratives are all constructs that intersect with the emergent mechanisms of change in the creative arts therapies.

Although creative arts therapies processes associated with transformation may be congruent with those of psychotherapy, differences may be noted in the primacy and value assigned to certain transformational processes associated with the arts-based relational epistemic. For instance in the creative arts therapies the sensory/embodied experiences and relational attunement, the transcendent qualities of imagination and creativity, the reenactment of relational histories within the therapeutic relationship, and the communicative, dialogic, and metaphoric qualities of the arts may assume primacy ( Patterson et al., 2011 ; Gerber et al., 2012 ; Haas-Cohen and Clyde Findlay, 2015 ; Van Lith, 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ).

The literature reviewed herein reflects promising emergent trends in identifying mechanisms of change in psychotherapy and the creative arts therapies, however, additional exploration is required to advance our knowledge and establish an epistemically sound evidence base for assessing change as it exists and operates specifically within the creative arts therapies. In this paper we aim to add to the emerging bodies of knowledge about proposed and emergent mechanisms and phenomena of change in the creative arts therapies.

Materials and Methods

The methods for this project included data generation and data analysis phases. These phases included the generation of the records reviewed for the study, the selection of the retrospective study records for coding and analysis, the human subjects ethical institutional board review and approval, the development of the deductive coding system, the organization, coding and categorization of the data, inter-coder alignment, analysis and interpretation, the identification of the primary and modifying themes, synthesis, and presentation of the findings.

In the first part of this section we describe the laboratory context and methods from which the textual data in the study records were generated and, in the second section we present the procedures for our deductive and interpretive coding and thematic analysis of the retrospective data.

Data Generation

The first phase of our investigation was designed to explore questions related to the nature of therapeutic processes and phenomena of change in the creative arts therapies. To address these questions, we developed a creative arts therapies laboratory course designed specifically to simulate and study arts-based, expressive, and intersubjective phenomena parallel to those in the creative arts therapies. The laboratory course ran for four academic quarters or 1 year over a period of 8 years during which we engaged doctoral students in the Ph.D. in Creative Arts Therapies program, from the disciplines of art therapy, dance/movement therapy, and music therapy, as participant/researchers. We used a method called Intrinsic Arts-Based Research. Intrinsic Arts-based Research originates from a psychoanalytic perspective in which the authentic intra- and inter-psychic experiences and data emerge organically through free associative processes within a relational context. In this method, we used and documented our individual and collective intrinsic aesthetic intersubjective experiences as participant/researchers in order to identify and describe the arts-based intersubjective processes that contribute to self/other awareness and narratives, metaphoric expression, insight, and transformation in the creative arts therapies.

The structure of the laboratory experience included a 30-min check-in about afterthoughts and remote reflections from the previous class and discussion of the assigned readings. The second part of the class was 1 h of undirected arts-based exploration in which the students became the participants immersed in all aspects of the intrinsic intersubjective arts-based experience. The goal was to study the authentic experience of the participants as they transitioned in and out of the intersubjective arts-space, experienced the challenges of creating arts-based responses within the intersubjective space. Following this 1 h of authentic intersubjective arts-based exploration, students were asked to step out of their participant role and step into a researcher role devoting 30 min to reflecting upon and documenting their arts-based intersubjective experiences in their journal. Finally, the last portion of the laboratory is a discussion sharing the individual and collective arts-based and intersubjective experiences with the group. Our investigation was designed to answer the following question:

“What are the factors that contribute to therapeutic mechanisms, psychological understanding, meaning making, and transformation within the intersubjective arts therapies process?”

From this simulated creative arts therapies experience students generated multiple types of data which included the arts-based immersive responses, reflective journal entries, group discussions, iterative arts-based reflective responses, and relevant literature. At critical points in the laboratory courses the students would organize, analyze and synthesize these multiple data types through a hybrid of thematic qualitative and arts-based approaches. The results of these analyses were written, arts-based, and performative culminating projects representing the formative findings from each course and summative findings from cumulative courses. These culminating projects became the retrospective records for this research project used to study the mechanisms of transformation.

Participants

In this research project the “participants” were eight de-identified study records from four students who participated in the laboratory course. The study records were the culminating written and arts based projects representing an analysis and synthesis of the intrinsic arts-based, observational, and reflective data collected by the student participant/researchers at the conclusion of each academic quarter in the laboratory course. Although the course has been in existence for 8 years, the records studied were selected for this study from the year 2012–2016 and represented three different student cohorts. The years from 2012 to 2016 were selected in order to include papers written only by students who had completed the course to avoid potential conflicts related to study participation and course evaluation. The laboratory course was conducted over a period of four academic quarters or 10 months per year, thus, in order to explore the progression of thematic trends over time, we selected one paper from the introductory course and one from the advanced course from each student in each cohort. These records were selected randomly, de-identified, given a participant identification number to replace the name, and paired by course and student. This initial sampling de-identification and pairing was conducted solely by the course instructor/primary author to protect the confidentiality of the students during analysis and publication. The study records and their content were used as primarily aggregate data for thematic analysis with the exception of exemplary de-identified excerpts used to amplify the meaning of the thematic results.

We complied with all human subjects ethical guidelines and had the study approved by the Drexel University Institutional Review Board which is the official human subjects research ethics body in the university. In compliance with the human subjects’ ethical guidelines and with respect for the students and graduates of the program who might have records in the project we notified them about the intention of the investigators to use de-identified aggregate and excerpted data from the records in the study and gave them the opportunity to withdraw their records or review their own records for identifiers. One complication with the de-identification, is that the arts-based investigative responses, central to the intrinsic arts-based research process and the culminating projects, had to be excluded, but descriptions of these processes are still very present in the textual data.

Data Organization and Coding

The coding system is a deductive or theoretical qualitative research approach designed to arrive at the identification of patterns of evidence and predominant themes relevant to our topic and research questions. The “ ‘theoretical’ thematic analysis would tend to be driven by the researcher’s theoretical or analytic interest in the area, and is thus more explicitly analyst driven” ( Braun and Clarke, 2006 , p. 84).

We intentionally selected this deductive method for our data analysis to juxtapose and align the extrinsic empirical and theoretical data alongside the inductive data generated in the intrinsic arts based research phase ( Braun and Clarke, 2006 ). Selecting and aligning these two data types and sources was a strategic decision designed to systematically compare, contrast, and integrate the intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives related to transformation for purposes of credibility and authenticity.

To develop the deductive coding system, we conducted a search of the current psychotherapy and creative arts therapies literature from which we identified and extracted the references to mechanisms or phenomena of change and transformation most frequently and consensually reported. We also included emergent evidence based constructs from the course objectives and processes. From these phenomena, we constructed our a priori parent coding categories. The a prior i parent coding categories were then further modified and defined by child codes that contributed to identifying and modifying specific aspects or operations of the parent codes. Our a priori coding categories were organized into the following parent categories for the initial deductive thematic analysis: arts making processes and arts-based research, expression and communication, reflection and awareness, relationships, ruptures, intersubjectivity, and transformation. The child codes and their relationship to their parent codes are presented in Table 1 . A coding book including categories and definitions for parent and child codes was developed provided for the coders to enhance inter-coder alignment.

TABLE 1. A priori parent and child coding categories.

Defining Coding Categories

The family of parent and child codes were defined not only to identify current trends in the literature, but also to increase inter-coder alignment across the three coders. Each parent code category housed modifying child categories that contributed to the defining properties of the parent category. The child categories were explicitly used in the actual coding process with implicit connections to the parent categories as illustrated in Table 1 . Throughout the initial coding process it became apparent, as is the case with most qualitative research coding and analysis, that certain a priori codes were assigned more frequently to excerpts in the textual data while others were not used frequently or at all. The most frequently used and meaningful codes emerged as our preliminary thematic results and are highlighted in Table 1 in bold italics.

Parent Categories

The parent code definitions are included below but space restrictions prohibit the definitions of the child codes here.

Expression/Communication

Methods and modes by which thoughts are made visible or audible within an intersubjective context. Examples might be a sensations, embodiment, and emotions expressed through arts, talking, writing, enacting and discussion that releases tension enhances functionality ( Zittoun, 2011 ; Van Lith, 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ).

Art Making Processes

The process of letting meaning emerge through a dynamic relationship between participants and the art media representing historical and current relational phenomena. Creative activity of making thoughts visible through arts process stimulates complex mind/body interactions contributing to the growth of new neural networks ( Zittoun, 2011 ; Caddy et al., 2012 ; Haas-Cohen and Clyde Findlay, 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ).

Reflection and Awareness

Making thoughts visible and learning how to think about and re-think about them through mentalization ( Forster et al., 2014 ) and/or visualization within the presence of another ( Zittoun, 2011 ; Forster et al., 2014 ). Surrendering to the unconscious, emergent thoughts, sensations, emotions engaging in implicit to explicit processing ( Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ). Creative reflection in the potential space leading to new knowledge and transformation through engagement with and resolution of existential dialectical tensions ( Bollas, 2002 ; Israelstam, 2007 ).

Relationship

An attentive and attuned relational alliance, merging past and present intersubjective narratives, constructed within an emotionally safe space for purposes of facilitating self-expression, self-exploration, reflection, and change. The therapeutic alliance makes room for free talking pre-verbal cognitions, attunement and the emotional space to hold dialectical tensions in the potential space. The potential space allows the individual to: (1) “hear from “his/her “own unconscious”; (2) engage in creative dialectical discourse between me and not-me: and, (3) make the “invisible psychic apparatus of the mind become visible and new narratives to emerge” ( Symington, 1996 ; Bollas, 2002 , p. 10; Knill, 2005 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Kazdin, 2007 ; Brown, 2011 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Forster et al., 2014 ).

Intersubjectivity

Joining with others in the unconscious or conscious co-creation of personal and collective narratives. The co-creation of the group narrative based on the sensory, kinesthetic, emotional, embodied and symbolic forms of knowledge. Awareness and relevance of the presence of others, both peers and leaders, and how this awareness informs and appears in the arts process and product ( Knill, 2005 ; Stern, 2005 ; Brown, 2011 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Schwartz, 2012 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ).

Ruptures include mind/body interactions and ways of thinking that interrupt or rupture repetition compulsion, ritual, beliefs, or routine changing meaning and creating new neural pathways ( Hayes et al., 2007 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Forster et al., 2014 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ).

Transformation

“A significant reconfiguration of perception and thought resulting in the lessening of psychic restraint and pain allowing for the emergence of new psychological perspectives that contribute to living a more creative life” ( Gerber et al., 2012 , p. 45). Arousal of memories, re-activation of emotions, levels of consciousness resulting in new learning and insight ( Hayes et al., 2007 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Van Lith, 2015 ; Lane et al., 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ).

Coders and Inter-Coder Alignment

The coders included one alumnus and one current PhD Candidate in addition to the laboratory course instructor. All students and alumni who had participated in and completed the laboratory course were invited to participate in the project. Each student coder had taken the course at a different time and with a different cohort while the instructor had been present for all of the courses. As a result each coder brought a different perspective based upon his/her experiences and roles as participant/researcher in the course factoring into and enriching the assignation and interpretation of the codes. We coded in pairs for each record in attempts to contribute to the credibility of the results by including multiple perspectives and member checks.

Based upon these multiple perspectives we recognized the need to evaluate the inter-coder alignment. Evaluation of the inter-coder alignment occurred in two ways. First, the coders met periodically throughout the coding process to discuss the inter-coder convergences and divergences of the code assignations. Second, we used the analytic functions of the Dedoose cross-platform application which allowed us to view the distribution, frequency, and co-occurrence of codes across coders.

Coding Procedures and Data Analysis

Our procedure for coding and analyzing the data from the eight study records included: (a) importing the a priori codes, definitions, and written texts into a cross-platform application called Dedoose; (b) employing the services of three coders; (c) immersion in the textual data and code assignation process; (d) inter-coder alignment checks; (e) analysis for thematic predominance and “keyness”; (f) interpretation and synthesis ( Braun and Clarke, 2006 ). Initially, we used a semantic method to code excerpts for literal content based upon the definitions for the a priori parent and child categories. “With a semantic approach, the themes are identified within the explicit or surface meanings of the data, and the analyst is not looking for anything beyond what a participant has said or what has been written” ( Braun and Clarke, 2006 , p. 84).

During the semantic analysis we identified the emergence of predominant categorical patterns of evidence from the a priori parent and child categories. We used Dedoose to explore the patterns of evidence and most frequently coded categories. The most frequently coded categories (Table 2 ) were then organized and aggregated with their a priori definitions. We then reviewed and organized the textual excerpts, explored the thematic content of the excerpts, examined co-occurrences of codes and inter-coder alignment, and then re-organized, revised, and collapsed the categories into new but related categories which became or data sets. These data sets were created according to the frequency and contextual predominance, co-occurrences, and textual meaning, resulting re-interpreted and integrated categories representing a merger of the extrinsic and intrinsic data.

TABLE 2. Preliminary data sets with a priori definitions.

From this point, it was natural to move from a semantic analysis into more interpretive work by exploring the latent content ( Braun and Clarke, 2006 ). Within this final interpretive phase we first re-named these new integrated data sets and their meanings which became the three primary themes and the related modifying and defining themes. Then we focused on exploring the relationship between the primary and modifying themes relative to the phenomenon of transformation. We used some arts-based methods (Figure 4 ) and diagrams (Figures 1 – 3 ) for the purposes of conceptualization, visualization, interpretation, and thematic synthesis. In exploring the relationships within and between the thematic constructs, we created dynamic interactive systems of change comprised of these transformative thematic phenomena (Figures 1 – 3 ).

FIGURE 1. Kinetic mobile system for dynamic change.

FIGURE 2. Figure/ground system for dynamic change.

FIGURE 3. Orbital system for dynamic change.

FIGURE 4. Art-based thematic initial conceptualization—dialectical rupture and resolution. Original in color. Created by primary author.

The results of our preliminary analysis yielded the identification of three primary themes modified and defined by interactive sub-themes related to transformational phenomena in the creative arts therapies. In this section we present the themes, define and describe each theme, present exemplars to amplify the meaning, and provide a summary synthesis of the thematic results as related to our research questions. As we present these results we re-emphasize the limitations of this analysis. The limitations became more apparent as we embarked on this project and realized that the scope, depth and breadth of our data might extend beyond the time and space constraints for this article. Our assessment of the data at this point in our analysis is that they are extremely rich and meaningful holding multiple implications for further research, theory building, and practice therefore requiring additional analysis.

Within those limitations, we identified several preliminary thematic patterns of evidence that were distributed throughout and across five of the original a prior i parent categories of arts-making processes and arts-based research, relationship, ruptures, intersubjectivity, and transformation . Within those predominant parent categories, the child categories or sub-themes that emerged included medium, mode and method, imagination flow and transcendence, intersubjective transcendence, sensory, kinesthetic embodied knowing, attunement/alignment, tension and dialectics, imaginal ruptures, relational ruptures, and dialectical rupture and resolution. These categories achieved primacy through both the frequency of occurrence and the relevant meaning or “keyness” to the inquiry. The “…‘keyness’ of a theme is not necessarily dependent on quantifiable measures, but rather on whether it captures something important in relation to the overall research question” ( Braun and Clarke, 2006 , p. 82).

The key categories were aligned with the original definitions (Table 2 ) and then these categories and their excerpts, selected across participants based upon their “keyness” to the inquiry, were analyzed for intersecting meanings, re-arranged and collapsed into data sets to form new integrated categories. These new integrated categories and their meanings were re-organized, collapsed, and rearranged to become the three primary themes and the related modifying and defining themes.

Primary Themes and Modifying Sub-Themes

Through our analysis we identified the following primary thematic phenomena along with their modifying and defining thematic constructs.

(1) Rupture, Resolution, and Transformation: Dialectical Rupture and Resolution, Relational Ruptures and Imaginational Ruptures;

(2) Relationship and Intersubjectivity: Relational Attunement, Dialectical tensions, Intersubjective transcendence

(3) Arts-based expression: Imaginational Flow/transcendence, sensory/kinesthetic/embodied levels of knowing, and intersubjective transcendence, medium mode and method.

Ruptures, Resolutions, and Transformation

Transformation is a major category and central focus for this study. The definition for transformation was the arousal of memories, re-activation of emotions, and levels of consciousness that mediate the new learning and insight through dialectical rupture and resolution ( Hayes et al., 2007 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Lane et al., 2015 ; Van Lith, 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ). Furthermore transformation includes a “… significant reconfiguration of perception and thought resulting in the lessening of psychic restraint and pain allowing for the emergence of new psychological perspectives that contribute to living a more creative life” ( Gerber et al., 2012 , p. 45). This theme includes the most frequently cited category of dialectical rupture and resolution along with inter-related defining constructs of relational and imaginational ruptures.

Dialectical rupture and resolution was the most frequently coded defining theme describing key transformative actions and moments. This theme increased in the frequency of coding over time during the laboratory course (Table 3 ).

TABLE 3. Progressive thematic coding frequency over time.

Dialectical rupture and resolution is inter-connected to multiple dynamic processes including relational attunement, imaginational flow and transcendence, and intersubjective transcendence and their dialectical counterparts of imaginational and relational ruptures. The dialectic between these relational and imaginational attunements, flow, and ruptures represents contradictions and tensions between the drive for progressive innovation and discovery and the longing for familiar recalcitrance–the known and the unknown. These tensions create the conditions for a system of dynamic change through destabilization and de-construction, reflection, re-construction, and re-stabilization resulting in insight, illumination, psychic growth, and new personal and intersubjective narratives ( Israelstam, 2007 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Forster et al., 2014 ).

Excerpts dialectical rupture and resolution

Ebbing and Flowing” addresses the natural fluctuations of life. Nothing stays the same – there is a constant flux. In our studio class we became aware of such dichotomies as death and life, distance and closeness, divorce and intimacy, facing a threat and running away from it.

In an attempt to understand my inherent tensions between consonance and dissonance, my ritual of staying in my learned comfort zone and the spontaneity of newness, and my holding onto of the familiar while letting go and growing, I wrote the following musical lyric:

Built up rattled nerves

Lay them flat on the ground, breath the sound in of dissonance

Buzzing flies around your ears

Play beginnings of life, stir the pot, pull the freedom near

It was through this lyrical writing where I helped myself reflect on my tension, embrace the different emotions I was feeling, and come to terms with this tension. I found that through the course, even though this dialectic existed and challenged me, I was more accepting of it as time passed. I understood that this dialectic would become present and the task would simply be adapting around or within it.

However, when we arrive at communal art making, we can face terrors, loss, and trauma and not be broken. We can experience sadness and anger and not fall down. Creating art together allows us to cope with the darkness, make meaning of our experiences, transform our existence, and find hope and peace. Through art we find resilience.

Relational ruptures are inextricably connected to the dynamic between relational attunement and dialectical tensions. The frequency of coding in this category increased over time during the laboratory course (Table 3 ).

Ruptures in the relationship are due to anxiety, fantasies about self/other, internal/external dialogs, and/or the breakdown in the relationship from disappointment and realization ( Knill, 2005 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Gerber et al., 2012 ; Forster et al., 2014 ). The successful resolution of these ruptures necessarily occurs within an emotionally held or “dialectically attuned” ( Israelstam, 2007 , p. 592) relationship in which creativity is used to re-imagine, explore and resolve the dialectical relational tensions. This process is iterative, hopefully progressive and transformative, but exists along a precarious dialectical edge the navigation of which can lead to either creativity and illumination or destruction and devastation ( Israelstam, 2007 , p. 592).

Excerpts relational rupture

About half way into the class, we were both on the floor, one of my classmates began to tear up and appear visibly upset. At that time I was tending to myself and my own needs, calmly breathing, humming a little melody, and overall in a peaceful state. Her condition aroused an immediate response from me, first one of surprise and helplessness, followed by one to breathe and attune to her. I recognized her stooped position and the passive weight in her body. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a lightness overcame me and my hand approached hers with a playful, non-threatening movement. She responded and we were engaged in a time of short play…

The sunken and hollow body position in my peer (Day 2) confounded me and, while I slowed down my movements and attuned to her, it wasn’t until after everyone had worked their way through sadness that it finally hit me. It was inevitable that it would affect me but the way it did, superficially at first (possibly defending myself by setting boundaries?) with an intense delayed sensation of it, was unexpected.

The spiral of intersubjective relationships among the participants, and the participants’ use of space, represents dynamic changes. We are always positioning ourselves in relation to each other and always sensing where we are and how we are. For example “when we feel open and receptive, we tend to move toward others and reduce or dissolve our physical boundaries” or in comparison “when we feel threatened or in conflict, or there is no trust yet built, we retreat from others and shore up our physical boundaries against them” ( Dosamantes, 1992 , p. 9).

The triangle formation appeared while writing a song and moving in response to the lyrics, as a song and dance gave the participants a creative vehicle for representing the conflict that had appeared between the student-participants and their instructors.

An understanding and empathy for what others in the class were feeling existed, even if their feelings were in opposition of my own. This made it clear that our feelings were on a dialectic continuum within an intersubjective context.

Imaginational ruptures are dialectically related to imaginational flow and transcendence. These themes progressively increased in coding frequency over time during the laboratory course (Table 3 ).

Ruptures in imagination include sensory, embodied, emotional psychic processes that evoke memory and fantasy, cause disruption in states of consciousness, and flow, and collisions between fantasy and reality. Imaginational ruptures are transitions in levels of consciousness requiring relinquishment of control, suspension of familiarity, renouncement of mundanity, and interruptions of rigid modes of thought ( Bollas, 2002 ; Knill, 2005 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ). Transitioning into the world of imagination is a dialectical and dynamic process creating tension between the real and imagined, the present and absent, and the known and unknown resulting in a conflict and resistance to the process ( Knill, 2005 ; Israelstam, 2007 ) and negotiation of a creative resolution. Imaginational ruptures and resolutions are considered to be central to achieving states of flow, transcendence, progressive and creative transformation necessary for insight and growth.

Excerpts imaginational ruptures

The artwork that I created in the initial classes represented the unknown, the muck. The ideas that formed were abstract and unclear. The images from these first classes were of the free flowing ink, and the muck, and the discussion that followed the classes reflected that other group members had a similar experience. It was an important stage because by allowing to freely explore the artistic media, clear symbols started to emerge. It was from the muck, if you wish, that the symbols of the tree and the bird grew.

As the heaviness lifted in the room, a Blues rhythm picked up and we all…engaged in a time of rhythmic movement and music making. I thoroughly enjoyed this and thought I could go on enjoying it when, unexpectedly, I no longer did.

An image of an incoming storm mirrored that experience for [Participant 1]. She wrote in her journal: “I can feel something coming up, taking form. The air is thick with anticipation of a storm. I feel like something is going to happen, resolve, open up, come together. What it is? I don’t know. How? I don’t know. But I can sense a certain tension and an anticipation of something.”

…Observed that while both music and movement evoked a response, they seemed to latch on to different facets of our emotions. This was most noticeable during my moving to Schubert’s “die liebe Farbe,” when movement allowed me to gain an auxiliary dimension of hurt, adding components of confusion and fragmentation.

Relationship and Intersubjectivity

Relationship and intersubjectivity includes the modifying and defining themes of relational attunement and dialectical tensions and intersubjective transcendence (cross referenced in the arts based expressive process theme). These themes progressively increased in coding frequency over time during the laboratory course (Table 3 ).

This theme refers to the attunement to others at the most fundamental emotional and unconscious level and joining in the co-creating, re-imagining, and transforming our personal and intersubjective narratives. The construction of these narratives includes the dialectic between various levels of trust/mistrust, distance and closeness, intimacy and alienation necessary for attunement to the most authentic, emotional, and fundamental of human experience and connection ( Knill, 2005 ; Stern, 2005 ; Brown, 2011 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Schwartz, 2012 ).

Relational attunement and dialectical tensions emerge and co-exist in the intersubjective arts-based expressive experience and in combination are akin to relational ruptures. Relational attunement and dialectical tensions both increased in coding frequency over time during the laboratory course (Table 3 ).

Relational attunement includes alignment to the other’s emotional life and invisible psychic apparatus ( Bollas, 2002 ) using imagination to facilitate “… the opening of a creative reflective space in which positive transformation can occur” ( Israelstam, 2007 , p. 592). Relational dialectical tensions refer to the dialog between alignment and misalignment, the “me and the not me” creating corollary existential and psychological life/death experiences resulting in the tension necessary for rupture, reflection, new narratives and insight, and creative transformation. The combination of attunement and dialectical tension occurring within the potential space appears to be essential to the construction of authentic relational knowing and attachment.

Excerpts relational attunement

When we create art, all differences melt and become irrelevant. We come together and connect through art. Sometimes coming together may take a while, other times it seems effortless broadly define consonance not just in relation to musical terms, but with relevance to structure, aesthetic appeal, and a person’s inherent, natural tendency.

I tried to anticipate X and Y’s rhythms and movements, trying to stay connected through cognitive awareness…I became part of the movement, the rhythm. I followed, I lead, I existed, interconnected to sounds and feels and raw emotion. It was exhilarating and so calmingly beautiful in the same space.

… seeing an expressive movement, mirroring its essence and feeling a sensation; experiencing an emotion, then moving the body in congruence with it; hearing a musical piece, adjusting the movement to the nature of the music and having an emotional response. In short, the interrelatedness of movement and emotion was present throughout, no matter what initiated what.

Excerpt relationship dialectical tensions

In the same artistic experience, one of us could feel comfort and another could feel discomfort, and we somehow transitioned within and around this space as individuals as well as a group within the experience.

Alternately, dissonance is defined in opposition to these terms, being disorganized, different, and disconnected. Within the consonance and dissonance themes were subthemes of ritual and spontaneity (a dialectical term discussed in Israelstam’s, 2007 article), holding and growing, sameness and difference, and connected and disconnected.”

“The mutual awareness of agreement or disagreement and even the realization of such understanding or misunderstanding” ( Gillespie and Cornish, 2010 , p. 19).

What happened with me when I was moving, that I was reminded of two different types of responses to other people, also informed me of proxemics. It is now clear to me that distances between people differ according to relation (close-distant, personal-professional, or first time-know).

Arts Based Expression

The theme of arts-based expression represents the process of letting meaning emerge through a dynamic triadic relationship between participant/researcher, media/mode/method and the art making. This theme remained constant in coding frequency across time during the laboratory course (Table 3 ). The secondary themes in this category are the sensory/kinesthetic and embodied ways of knowing, imaginational flow and transcendence, and intersubjective transcendence.

The arts-based expression requires the immersion in creative process that makes thoughts visible using the media, modes, and methods of artistic expression ( Levine, 2005 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Caddy et al., 2012 ; Haas-Cohen and Clyde Findlay, 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ). Immersion in the expressive arts process requires engagement in the dialectic between resistance, rupture, and resolution, surrendering to the imagination, and ultimately entering a transcendent state of consciousness and imaginative flow, acute relational attunement, and empathic intersubjective transcendence.

Sensory/kinesthetic/embodied ways of knowing, are primal unconscious forms of cognition that hold the artifacts of our earliest memories and stimulate emotional systems in the brain without the assignation of language. The arts experience uses sensory/kinesthetic/embodied and imaginal knowledge to transcend time retrieving the primal experience and replicating the original emotional response ( Bollas, 2002 ; Chilton et al., 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ). Just as in infancy, due to its primal nature, sensory/kinesthetic/embodied and imaginal knowledge creates acute relational attunement at the most fundamental emotional level. This theme remained constant over time with a slight decrease in the frequency coding over time in the laboratory course (Table 3 ).

Excerpts sensory/kinesthetic/embodied knowing

Initially the ocean drum and the swaying around me took me to a peaceful place, but over time the feeling shifted in the room. The movements slowed down, all DMTs were on the floor. Harmonies sung in a minor key, combined with the restricted movement and contracted body language around me evoked a state of deep, penetrating sadness. I found myself rocking, crying, remembering. This emotional state was hard to shake, even when I made physical changes (standing up, increasing energy).

Finding Resilience through Art” via movement. With my eyes closed there was little coping, however, as I opened them and began to create with my hands, first in a miniscule manner, but over time more and more elaborately, I was able to gain a new perspective and move outside of myself.

When I was dancing I noticed that my body takes different positions and shapes in space. I noticed that my movements varied. Once I was moving slowly, and other times quickly with more expression. Once I was using just parts of my body, in separation, and other times my whole body was moving. There were times that I was in a low position, and there were times that my body took shapes when I was standing or jumping. After a while, I still wasn’t sure what all of this meant to me, or if it had any meaning at all. I decided to move naturally for a while, warming up my body, as in preparation for deeper exploration.

Imaginational flow/transcendence relates the “desired level of consciousness attained once fully engaged in the arts process… [transcendent]beyond confines of physical world while allowing peripheral awareness of it…” promoting meditation, introspection, reflection, and empathy ( Gerber et al., 2012 , p. 44). Artistic levels of consciousness also refer to a state of imaginational flow bypassing thought rigidity and resulting in the “growth of new neuron networks” ( Caddy et al., 2012 , p. 328). Surrendering to the imaginational flow through free association and attunement to sensory embodied ways of knowing results in restoration of play, loss of time consciousness, transcendence beyond physical and mental strife, and expansion of the perception of possibility ( Knill, 2005 ; Van Lith, 2015 ).

This theme increased in coding frequency over time during the laboratory course (Table 3 ).

Excerpts imaginational flow/transcendence

I lay down on a floor stretching my mind to the limit of its extension to find answers. Themes, themes, themes… like I heard this world all over the place, all the time… I felt like I couldn’t find it. I felt stuck. How I am supposed to find it? I closed my eyes and my mind went somewhere far, far away. In my mind I was levitating over the mountains, rivers, seas, oceans and dessert. I felt relaxed and calm. My breath was stable and my heart beat pretty calm. I stayed there for a while, however, I lost control of time. I think I might have fallen asleep as at one point I felt cold, so cold that I curled up in the embryonic positions shaking and tensing my muscles. I still didn’t want to leave the floor it felt so supporting, however, the emerging cold made me move in a very uncomfortable way. I slowly began to twist, bend, writhe with a extremely bound muscle tension and without any direction. Just shaping my body through space and to adapt to the cold. Suddenly I hear this loud and annoying sound BZZZZZ and I stand up on straight legs. It was so unexpected as a quick unexpected frog coming out of a dark sleepy pool. Dark sleepy pool? Unexpected frog? I stopped myself for a while and wondered if I feel ok. Frog, pool, splash, unexpected… Yes! I have an idea.

Intersubjective transcendence describes the levels of consciousness attained using imagination and immersion in arts-based processes to transcend the physical boundaries of interpersonal separateness and enter the sensory, emotional, and imaginal world of “the other” enhancing attunement, understanding, and empathy ( Symington, 1996 ; Bollas, 2002 ; Gerber et al., 2012 ). This theme increased in coding frequency over time during the laboratory course (Table 3 ).

Excerpt intersubjective transcendence

Through my movement inquiry I noticed that true togetherness, a connecting of the hands, wiped away all the differences. Togetherness and connection in DMT is promoted through the therapist’s mirroring or reflecting of patients’ movement qualities. This results in an increased degree of somatic and emotional understanding as well as empathy.

At the beginning there was a sense of slowness, careful attention and intimate contact among the participants, and deeper exploration of individual problems, however, expressive movement was limited. Later during the session, expressive movement emerged and There was a sense of meditative and trance dance, in relation to expressive and meditative music.

Progressive Thematic Coding

In addition to analysis of the data thematically, we also wanted to explore how these thematic results emerged, sustained, developed, or diminished over time in the laboratory course. The progression of the themes over time was tracked by the frequency with which these thematic categories were coded in the study records from the introductory course (716) to the advanced course (719). Interestingly, all of these coded categories except for two, increased in the coded frequency over the progression of the course. Of particular note is the dramatic increase in the frequency that dialectical rupture and resolution was coded along with imaginational flow, relational attunement, relational and imaginational ruptures and tension and dialectics generally doubled in frequency. Medium mode and method in the arts-based expression category and sensory, kinesthetic and embodied knowledge remained the same over time with the latter dipping by just a few instances. Although there are numerous interpretations of this result, the distinct trends bear noting and further investigation (Table 3 ).

In summary, the primary thematic categories of ruptures, resolution, and transformation, relationship and intersubjectivity, and arts-based expression together with their modifying and defining themes, represent what may be transformative phenomena equivalents to mechanisms of change in the creative arts therapies. Due to the pluralistic intersubjective nature of reality and aesthetic knowledge in the creative arts therapies, these transformative phenomena are conceptualized as interactive dynamic systems of change in contrast to singular, linear, causal mechanisms of change. We have proposed several dynamic systems to illustrate how we envision these thematic phenomena interacting with one another to describe transformation (Figures 1 – 3 ) which are discussed in more detail in the Section “Discussion.”

In this preliminary phase of our research study, we have explored formative phenomena that, taken together, may be descriptive of the ways in which change occurs in the creative arts therapies. In this section we explore the dynamic interactive relationships between the primary and modifying themes and propose how these interactive phenomena might form a system of change. We also address the limitations of the study and how those limitations both elucidate the results and illuminate directions for future research. Finally, we recommend methods of evaluating these formative dynamic constructs of change in research, clinical practice, and the development of an evidence base for the creative arts therapies.

In interpreting the findings for this study, it is essential to re-emphasize that these findings represent a small but in depth sampling of data generated by student participant/researchers from a laboratory course simulating the creative arts therapies experience. Therefore, considering the interpretation and transferability of these constructs to theory building and clinical practice resides within and is limited by that context. With that said, we also may have to re-consider the hegemonic criteria, implicit in that statement, by which we typically evaluate research results. For instance, in this study a method for evaluating the results of this study have to more mindfully include a paradigm shift. In this paradigm shift it may be more useful and relevant to select arts-based or qualitative research evaluative criteria that are more aligned with the aesthetic intersubjective mental model ( Greene, 2007 ) or worldview of the creative arts therapies in contrast to a quantitative research reductive mindset more aligned with physical sciences. Within an aesthetic intersubjective mental model, the themes we identified represent phenomena that are dynamically and spatially inter-related presuming change as related to interaction as opposed to singularly static linear and causal constructs. Consequently, we are exploring the construction of meaning and change through kinetics, dynamics, inter-relatedness, and dialectics reflective of the ontological and epistemic nature of our fields and these thematic phenomena. Contextualized within these paradigmatic and methodological shifts we explore the dynamic systems of change created from these thematic phenomena, their implications for clinical and research theory and practice.

Dynamic Thematic Synthesis

The primary, modifying and defining themes identified in this study represent dynamic phenomena that dialectically adjoin and collide in the arts-based relational context descriptive of qualities of perceptual, emotional, relational, and behavioral experience contributing to change in the creative arts therapies. The primary interactive thematic constructs from our analysis are: (1) ruptures, resolutions, and transformation; (2) relationship and intersubjectivity; and, (3) arts-based expression. These primary thematic constructs are mediated by a dynamic and iterative interaction with the modifying and defining thematic phenomena of dialectical rupture and resolution, sensory/kinesthetic/embodied knowledge, imaginational flow/transcendence and rupture, relational attunement and dialectical tension, relational rupture and intersubjective transcendence . The dynamic interaction between these phenomena occurs in an arts-based expressive and intersubjective holding environment that can tolerate, emotionally regulate, and accommodate the creative and relational dialectical processes of contradiction, tension, and resolution necessary to promote change. We explore these dynamic constructs in more depth, examine different interactive configurations, and consider their relevance as a system of arts-based relational mechanisms of change.

Central to our discussion of mechanisms of change is the operational definition we used for transformation which was the arousal of memories, re-activation of emotions, and levels of consciousness that mediate new learning and insight through dialectical rupture and resolution ( Hayes et al., 2007 ; Israelstam, 2007 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Lane et al., 2015 ; Van Lith, 2015 ; Czamanski-Cohen and Weihs, 2016 ). Furthermore, transformation is a “… significant reconfiguration of perception and thought resulting in the lessening of psychic restraint and pain allowing for the emergence of new psychological perspectives that contribute to living a more creative life” ( Gerber et al., 2012 , p. 45).

Within the literature and our data dialectical rupture and resolution was identified as one of our most predominant and overarching themes instrumental to transformation. Dialectical ruptures and resolutions are the pervasive ongoing and driving forces central to change, fueling creative, relational, and psychological growth from the friction between seeming contradictions in thought, belief, and experience. Typical dialectical tensions emerge from the existential anxieties and conflicts between the drive for progressive innovation and the gravitational longing for familiar recalcitrance–seeking the known from the unknown, creating something from nothing. In our study, the dialectical rupture and resolution process was mediated primarily by the dynamic interaction between relational attunement, imaginational flow, and intersubjective transcendence and their correlates of relational and imaginational ruptures. These tensions create the conditions for a system of dynamic change through iterative phases of destabilization and de-construction of pre-existing beliefs and narratives, re-construction of new narratives, and relationship re-stabilization resulting in new insight and illumination ( Israelstam, 2007 ; Zittoun, 2011 ; Forster et al., 2014 ).

Essential to the resolution and reparation of these dialectic tensions and ruptures are the interrelated thematic constructs of relationship and intersubjectivity and arts-based expression. In our study and, in the creative arts therapies and psychotherapy literature, the construction of a relationally attuned, emotionally held and responsive intersubjective culture is deemed essential for facilitation of surrender to and engagement in the arts-based expressive processes. Surrendering to the imagination, necessarily includes engagement in dialectic between resistance, rupture, and resolution ultimately allowing for the attainment of the transcendent state of imaginative flow, acute relational attunement, and intersubjective transcendence. Consequently, the intersubjective arts based expressive process juxtaposes imaginational flow and relational attunements and their correlate dialectic ruptures creating an ongoing transformative dialog necessary for resolution and change –jarring fixed and rigid beliefs that impede progressive expression, conceiving, re- imagining and birthing new systems of thought and perception, contributing to reparation, synthesis and transformation within a strong relational attuned emotionally holding environment.

Implicit in and central to these relational, arts-based, and intersubjective processes, is the invisible and influential role of sensory/kinesthetic/embodied knowledge and relational attunement. Sensory/kinesthetic/embodied modes of knowing and communication, originating from the beginning of life, create relational attunement at the most fundamental, poignant, and penetrating levels inaccessible through more traditional means of communication. Sensory/kinesthetic/embodied knowing within the relational or potential space contributes to the fluctuating levels of consciousness essential for imaginational flow and intersubjective transcendence ( Ogden, 1992 ; Hagman, 2005 ; Israelstam, 2007 ). This state of flow facilitates levels of consciousness that transcend the limitations of physical, temporal, and spatial boundaries enhancing interpersonal awareness and empathy and the basis for the construction of authentic emotional relationships that could both withstand and facilitate ongoing ruptures and resolutions.

We propose, therefore, that the dynamic interaction between these thematic phenomena in varying combinations and at varying strategic times, within the therapy and the therapeutic relationship, generates transformative responses. This is a preliminary study with formative qualitative evidence about these transformative phenomena. That evidence combined with the progressive frequency by which our categories were coded across time in the study posits some intriguing ideas and questions. In that finding all but two of the primary and modifying themes increased in the frequency by which they were coded over time (Table 3 ). Of particular interest is dramatic increase in the frequency of coding for the theme of dialectical rupture and resolution, within the overall theme of ruptures, resolutions and transformation, along with modifying themes of relational and imaginal ruptures. This increase along with the concomitant increases in relational attunement, intersubjective transcendence, and imaginational flow suggests that there is perhaps a dynamic interaction between these experiences that create the progressive conditions necessary for facile engagement in the dialectical rupture and resolution process essential for change. In other words, the interactive mechanisms or phenomena from the study progressively contribute to the creation of a relationally attuned intersubjective culture in which imagination, dialectical tensions, and arts-based expressive process develop over time and indeed might be contribute to change and transformation.

In considering the nature, meaning, relationship, and progression of these preliminary and formative interactive dynamic phenomena we revisit the concept of mechanisms of change. With regard to mechanisms of change and how change occurs in the creative arts therapies, we think that our findings necessitate a paradigm shift from a singular causal action to a dynamic interactive system between multiple human phenomena. In this paradigmatic shift and proposed model, in contrast to more traditional definitions and evaluation of mechanisms of change, the relationship of the mechanism and the outcome is not linear and measureable but rather dynamic, multi-dimensional, and descriptive.

Mechanisms of Change: Paradigmatic Considerations

A review of the nature and relationship of our thematic findings relative to the extant concepts of mechanisms of change suggests paradigmatic and methodological reconsiderations. Mechanistic research resides predominantly within a post-positivist paradigm in which a statistical and singular causal relationship is created between the mechanism, intervention, and the outcome as the explanation of how change occurs ( Kazdin and Nock, 2003 ; Kazdin, 2007 ). There are particular bodies of knowledge and domains of scientific research in which this approach is warranted resulting in valuable answers to specific questions. However, due to the nature of reality and forms of knowledge in the creative arts therapies, mechanisms of change may require reconsideration, redefinition, and reconfiguration. As described previously, in the creative arts therapies we deem reality to be pluralistic and intersubjectively co-constructed while the related forms of aesthetic knowledge are necessarily idiosyncratic, circuitous, dialectic, dynamic, and emergent. These basic philosophical differences contraindicate the use of linear models of change evaluation to accurately assess and understand the nature and process of change in the creative arts therapies ( Aigen, 1991 ; Hayes et al., 2007 ; Chilton et al., 2015 ; Archibald and Gerber, 2018 ).

Our contention is reflected in Collins and Sayer’s (as cited in Hayes et al., 2007 , p. 716) assertion that change in psychotherapy is a dynamic system which cannot rely upon more traditional linear methods of research to account for “intra-individual variability which traditionally has been viewed as ‘noise’ or error.” This paradigm shift allows for the inclusion of “dynamic and dialectic interactive process between these multiple intra/inter psychic and intersubjective realities” ( Gerber, 2016 , p. 656) representing the idiosyncratic vigor of pluralistic human phenomena and reliant upon “… the coexistence and dialectical tensions between levels of consciousness, temporality, and spatiality” ( Archibald and Gerber, 2018 , p. 3). This view allows for the creation of more interdependent, multi-dimensional mechanisms that are textural and descriptive rather than reductive and measurable. Such a paradigm “contributes to the development of a creative philosophical frame foundational for both an art[s] therapy theory as well as a research mentality and methodology the purpose of which is the generation of new knowledge ( Johnson and Gray, 2010 ; Johnson, 2015 ; Gerber, 2016 , p. 656).”

Dynamic Systems of Change

Based on our research findings and this suggested paradigm shift we might conceptualize mechanisms of change, within the creative arts therapies, as dynamic systems of relational, imaginative, and dialectical phenomena the interaction of which transforms perception, emotion, relationships, and behaviors. In conceptualizing and visualizing how our primary thematic phenomena jointly form systems of change, we arrived at a few preliminary proposals. We propose three dynamic systems of transformation in which the primary and modifying thematic phenomena are aligned in different configurations and dynamic relationships (Figures 1 – 3 ). The three systems might be named the kinetic mobile system, the figure/ground system, and the orbital system. Although similar these models do vary with regard to the juxtaposition and inter- relationship of each phenomena, the degree and type of movement and dynamic interaction between and amongst the phenomena, and consideration of the requisite balance between essential chaos and organization related to implications for dynamic change within the creative arts therapies.

Kinetic Mobile System

In the kinetic mobile system of dynamic transformation, the themes are conceptualized as shapes that are connected by bi-directional arrows or invisible hanging wires. Each shape is carefully positioned relative to its the other familial themes and each is considered to be of relative equal weight and size. In this system, all of the parts are in constant motion in relation to one another creating infinite combinations, within and beyond their familial themes, of interactive dynamic encounters, collisions, confrontations, ruptures and ultimately resolutions. The dialectical rupture and resolution shape and the arts-based expression shape are positioned at the top and bottom of the mobile since, although not conceived as linearly related, are often considered to be pivotal as both initiators and holders of change. Relational attunement is positioned as central to moderating between the arts based expressive process and the dialectical rupture and resolution. The kinetic mobile model is multi-dimensional allowing for both this strategic positioning but also the possibilities of infinite other unpredictable juxtapositions in a cycle of change so that each relational and imaginational rupture sets off a new relational, imaginational creative resolutions. In this system the dynamics are emergent, unpredictable and cyclical –at any point in this system the chain reaction will be initiated and move through various phases. This system perhaps most accurately reflects delicate balance between chaos and organization and the potential for destruction or creativity, that is central to the resolution of the inherent dialectical relational arts-based processes contributing to a systems of change in the creative arts therapies.

Figure/Ground System

The figure/ground system of dynamic transformation from our study re-configures the primary and modifying familial themes in terms of contextual or conditional phenomena as the necessary background or holding environment for the more dynamic interactive or moving parts in the foreground. In this model, the two primary themes of arts-based expression and relationship and intersubjectivity are viewed as more contextual conditions essential for the emergence of dialectical rupture and resolution which is, in the intermediary ground, conceived as pivotal to change relative to interaction with the other phenomena. The other phenomena, although grouped in their thematic families, are also conceptualized as active and interactive in and around each other and the contextual conditions. In this model, instead of all of the parts randomly moving there are some phenomena that are conceptualized as stabilizers or holders so that the other parts can freely move around. These factors are the arts-based, relationship and intersubjectivity phenomena which are generally considered to be the essential and constant environmental factors central to change in the creative arts therapies. However, it should be noted that these contextual phenomena include multiple kinetic phenomena that might, under differing conditions, influence the degree of stability or rupture thus effecting the dynamics of the whole system. Relative to our musings about the degree and interaction between chaos and organization, this model attempts to provide a more intentional equanimity and delicate balance between the variability and stability of the phenomena with the understanding that this balance can be disrupted at any moment and under any conditions.

Orbital System

In the orbital system all major thematic phenomena are compressed into larger inclusive categories and visualized as equal in size and proximity from each other orbiting around and mediated by a bi-directional center. In this system, as in the others, there are multiple pathways for these phenomena to interact and influence each other for the purpose of informing change but perhaps in this system the possible combinations are more limited. This system appears simpler and less chaotic with less moving parts and limited pathways of interaction. The question arises as to how the simplification, organization, and restriction of possibilities influences the dynamism of these systems of change. In this case we have to critically evaluate if order and simplification sacrifices the essential ontological and epistemic nature of the phenomena and the value of human experience necessary for change in the creative arts therapies. This is an important consideration as we move toward exploring the most authentic systems of change in creative arts therapies. This lead us into considering methods and approaches to evaluating these findings and emergent systems of change.

Of course, these are very preliminary ideas and conceptualizations ripe for further creative discourse and investigation. The additional creative development might benefit from both construction of three dimensional actual and arts-based models to further study the systems of interaction combined with elicitation and documentation of the experiences of actual humans to contribute to the more totalistic understand these transformative phenomena.

In proposing these dynamic systems of change, which are based both in our data and in psychotherapy and creative arts therapies theory and research, the questions arise as to how we would evaluate these dynamic systems as mechanisms of change; and, if they will contribute to our understanding of what change is and how it occurs in the creative arts therapies. Even though outside of the scope of this phase of the study, these questions warrant a momentary consideration relative to the implications for rigor, credibility, and epistemic authenticity in both research and clinical practice. Implicit in the paradigm shift from a post-positivist to a dialectical aesthetic intersubjective perspective ( Chilton et al., 2015 ; Johnson, 2015 ; Gerber, 2016 ) is the construction of methods to evaluate the nature, qualities, and dynamics of these phenomena individually and interactively using epistemically comparable modes of assessment.

In qualitative research and arts-based research there are approaches to evaluating credibility and authenticity of similarly regarded phenomena ( Barone and Eisner, 2012 ; Leavy, 2015 ). For instance, Barone and Eisner (2012) offer evaluative concepts for arts-based research such as incisiveness, concision, and evocation and illumination all of which relate to the aesthetic, emotional, intuitive, communicative, and relational qualities of arts-based expression while being mindful of rigor and authenticity. Perhaps there are parallel evaluative approaches using such concepts as applied to the evaluation of these phenomenological experiences in both research and clinical practices. Our evaluation processes would most likely consist of critical reflection and discourse, rich textural and textual description, and arts-based responses created and shared amongst participant/researchers and perhaps with an audience. Although these are just very preliminary and nascent ideas which require more thought and development it is necessary to begin thinking about them as we construct this dynamic system of transformative elements and consider ways in which we might understand their implications for research and clinical practice.

Limitations and Implications for Future Research

The results of this study are preliminary and naturally include multiple limitations that both relate to the findings but also illuminate new directions for future research. The limitations and implications for future research cohabit the same dialectical spaces and relate to the nature of the analog study, the diversity, distribution and number of records reviewed, the importance and impact of the multiple perspectives of the coders, the nature and clarity of the coding system, and the noticeable absence of references to the transferential relationships.

The first limitation relates to the analog data which was collected from a laboratory setting simulating conditions parallel to the creative arts therapies experience. Although this is a limitation, since it is not data from actual creative arts therapies treatment, it could also conceivably be a benefit. In this analogous laboratory setting, the participant/researchers still experienced and expressed a range of perceptual, emotional, imaginal, relational, and behavioral phenomena similar to those of an actual therapy session. Additionally, since the key informants were both creative arts therapists and doctoral student participant/researchers, they were accustomed to the psychological repercussions inherent in creative arts therapies encounter. Therefore, they were able to experience, tolerate, and observe the anxieties, uncertainties, frustrations, joys, insights, and resolutions of this parallel situation. In addition, they were also able to document, analyze, articulately describe, and represent their experiences using arts-based and textual methods. The limitation resides in the transferability of these findings to actual creative arts therapies sessions representing multiple disciplines, settings, and populations. Perhaps upon further investigation and refinement of the results these systems of transformation might be studied in varying treatment contexts.

The next limitation relates to the diversity, distribution, and number of records relative to understanding the nature and progression of transformative phenomena over time as well as across and within disciplines. We initially selected 16 study records but ultimately only used eight for this preliminary study. The use of fewer records was based on our decision to conduct this preliminary pilot phase of the study in which we could test and evaluate the coding system, the inter-coder alignment, and adjust both as necessary for the next study phase. The limitation of using the fewer records is that we did not get the distribution we would have liked across the different yearly cohorts, the course progression, and creative arts therapies disciplines. A more even distribution data across cohort and discipline would provide breadth and diversity in all patterns of evidence as well as an analysis of discipline specific patterns of data and progressive responses over time. We did retrieve some promising preliminary data relative to the increasing frequency and appearance of particular phenomena in the progressive courses over time which may be relevant to our study of transformation, however, these data require further exploration. One interesting finding from these progressive frequencies was, that in contrast to the increase in all thematic phenomena, the sensory/kinesthetic/embodied knowledge theme decreased ever so slightly. One interpretation of this change could be that the increase of relationship, intersubjectivity, consciousness and open communication in the group diminished the need for and prevalence of more unconscious modes of knowing and communication—imagination or fantasy about others is transformed into knowledge, creative and open expression. Of course, there are multiple other confounding factors that could explain this finding and require examination before we can affirm this postulation; but, it provides interesting musings for future research.

In reviewing, analyzing and reflecting upon the data for this study, we became acutely aware of an additional limitation as well as a potential source of rich data related to the diverse perspectives of students and instructors. In particular, we were interested in the hierarchical relational phenomena that are parallel and central to transformation within the therapeutic relationship in the creative arts therapies process. Of note is the fact that these data were retrieved from a course in which students have concerns about being evaluated by the instructors, therefore, openly addressing their experience of this relationship in their culminating assignments posed a significant risk. Within this context, it is not surprising that there was minimal explicit reference to the real or imagined relationship between the student participant/researchers and the faculty participant/researchers in the records we reviewed. The stunning absence of reference to this hierarchical relationship is relative to the challenges of articulating these transferential phenomena with their associated real, perceived, and imagined scenarios and implications in both the classroom and psychotherapy setting. Further exploration of the specific ways in which these hierarchical relational mechanisms interact with our dynamic systems of change is warranted.

There were two major limitations relative to the coding system. First the definitions were in some cases awkwardly worded and consequently challenging to interpret which may have influenced the inter-coder alignment. Although we had a relatively high occurrence of inter-coder alignment, fine tuning these definitions might strengthen that alignment and contribute to concision and accuracy. Second, there was significant overlap between some of the coding categories. Therefore, even though some codes were not used frequently or at all, elements of those codes were implicitly represented in other codes (e.g., the parent category of reflection not coded but reflection was central to the resolution of dialectical ruptures). To address this issue, using the results of the first phase of the study we can rework the definitions for purposes of clarity, elimination, or amplification of overlap. We also might want to conduct another review and coding using more of an inductive process to identify additional thematic trends emergent from the text for comparison to and integration with the deductive categories for a more comprehensive and authentic reflection of the data.

Finally, in continuing our investigation into these dynamic interactive systems of transformation we hope to develop methods to evaluate if and how people change relative to these powerful human relational, imaginative, and dialectical experiences within the creative arts therapies. Now that we have defined what we believe are formative transformative phenomena and dynamic interactive systems of change we can begin to involve more stakeholders in interviews, focus groups, and or analog laboratory experiences to explore the credibility and authenticity of these preliminary results.

The purpose of this study was to examine the dynamic and interactive factors that might be considered mechanisms of change in the creative arts therapies. We identified three primary thematic transformative phenomena of change with their interactive modifiers that acting in concert with each other form dynamic systems of change in the arts therapies. We suggest that dynamic systems of change are more relevant to the underlying epistemological and ontological foundations of the arts therapies than linear, causal and measureable mechanistic approaches. As we proceed into our next phase of the study we need to re-evaluate our coding categories and procedures, continue to develop inter-coder alignment protocols, critically evaluate the influence of the differing student/faculty perspectives, and expand on methods of evaluating the authenticity and credibility of these dynamic transformative systems.

Author Contributions

NG conceived, proposed, researched, and wrote the article. KB and NP did the coding for the study. KB and CB worked on the literature review.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge and honor all of the creative courageous students who participated in generating data for this research study. They are all dedicated scholars and creative arts therapists committed to using innovative research methods to study and advance knowledge in their respective creative arts therapies field. These emerging scholars are the future of creative arts therapies so we applaud them and thank them.

Aigen, K. (1991). The Roots of Music Therapy: Towards an Indigenous Research Paradigm. Ph.D. thesis, New York University, New York, NY.

Google Scholar

Archibald, M., and Gerber, N. (2018). Arts and mixed methods research: an innovative methodological merger. Am. Behav. Sci. 62, 956–977. doi: 10.1177/0002764218772672

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Barone, T., and Eisner, E. W. (2012). Arts Based Research. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Bollas, C. (2002). Free Association. Cambridge: Icon Books.

Braun, V., and Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Q. Res. Psychol. 3, 77–101. doi: 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Brown, L. J. (2011). Intersubjective Processes and the Unconscious. New York, NY: Routledge.

Caddy, L., Crawford, F., and Page, A. C. (2012). Painting a path to wellness: correlations between participating in a creative activity group and improved measured mental health outcome. J. Psychiatr. Ment. Health Nurs. 19, 327–333. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2850.2011.01785.x

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Chilton, G., Gerber, N., and Scotti, V. (2015). Towards an aesthetic intersubjective paradigm for arts based research: an art therapy perspective. UNESCO Observatory Multi Disciplinary J. Arts 5, 1–27.

Cooper, D. E. (ed.) (1997). Aesthetics: The Classic Readings: Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Czamanski-Cohen, J., and Weihs, K. (2016). The bodymind model: a platform for studying the mechanisms of change induced by art therapy. Arts Psychother. 51, 63–71. doi: 10.1016/j.aip.2016.08.006

Dosamantes, I. (1992). Body image repository for cultural idealizations and denigrations of the self. Arts Psychother. 19, 257–267. doi: 10.1016/0197-4556(92)90003-7

Forster, C., Berthollier, N., and Rawlinson, D. (2014). A systematic review of potential mechanisms of change in psychotherapeutic interventions for personality disorder. J. Psychol. Psychother. 4, 1–14. doi: 10.4172/2161-0487.1000133

Gadamer, H. (1975/2003). Truth and Method , Trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall (New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, Ltd.).

Gerber, N. (2016). “Mixed methods research and art therapy,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Art Therapy , eds D. Gussak and M. Rosal (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), 654–662.

Gerber, N., Chilton, G., Cohen-Liebman, M. S., Manders, E., Shim, M., and Templeton, E. (2012). Art based research as a pedagogical approach to studying intersubjectivity in the creative arts therapies. J. Appl. Arts Health 3, 39–48. doi: 10.1386/jaah.3.1.39_1

Gerber, N., and Myers-Coffman, K. (2017). “Translation in arts-based research,” in Handbook of Arts-Based Research , ed. P. Leavy (New York, NY: Guilford Press), 587–607.

Gerber, N., and Scotti, V. (2017). “An artistic inquiry into aesthetic intersubjective and transferential phenomena in creative arts therapies doctoral education,” in Cultural Landscapes in Arts Therapies , eds R. Hougham, S. Pitruzzella, and S. Scoble (Devon: University of Plymouth Press), 81–103.

Gillespie, A., and Cornish, F. (2010). Intersubjectivity: towards a dialogical analysis. J. Theory Soc. Behav. 40, 19–46. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5914.2009.00419.x

Greene, J. (2007). Mixed Methods in Social Inquiry. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Haas-Cohen, N., and Clyde Findlay, J. (2015). Art Therapy and the Neuroscience of Relationships Creativity, and Resiliency: Skills and Practices. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

Hagman, G. (2005). Aesthetic Experience: Beauty, Creativity and the Search for the Ideal. Amsterdam: Rodopi. B.V.

Harris-Williams, M. (2010). The Aesthetic Development: The Poetic Spirit of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books.

Hayes, A. M., Laurenceau, J., Feldman, G., Strausss, J. L., and Cardaciotto, L. (2007). Change is not always linear: the study of nonlinear and discontinuous patterns of change in psychotherapy. Clin. Psychol. Rev. 7, 715–723. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2007.01.008

Hervey, L. W. (2000). Artistic Inquiry in Dance Movement Therapy: Creative Research Alternatives. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, Ltd.

Israelstam, K. (2007). Creativity and dialectical phenomena from dialectical edge to dialectical space. Int. J. Psychoanal. 88, 591–607. doi: 10.1516/N79N-NL37-H521-5335

Johnson, B., and Gray, R. (2010). “A history of philosophical and theoretical issues for mixed methods research,” in Sage Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Research , ed. A. Tashakkori and C. Teddlie (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.), 69–94.

Johansson, P., and HØglend, P. (2007). Identifying mechanisms of change in psychotherapy: mediators of treatment outcome. Clin. Psychol. Psychother. 14, 1–9. doi: 10.1002/cpp.514

Johnson, R. B. (2015). Dialectical pluralism: a metaparadigm whose time has come. J. Mix. Methods Res. 11, 156–173. doi: 10.1177/155868981560769

Kazdin, A. E. (2007). Mediators and mechanisms of change in psychotherapy research. Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol. 3, 1–27. doi: 10.1080/10503307.2014.889330

Kazdin, A. E., and Nock, M. K. (2003). Delineating mechanisms of change in child and adolescent therapy: methodological issues and research recommendations. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 44, 1116–1129. doi: 10.1111/1469-7610.00195

Knill, P. J. (2005). “Foundations for a theory of practice,” in Principles and Practice Of Expressive Arts Therapy: Toward A Therapeutic Aesthetics , eds P. J. Knill, E. G. Levine, and S. K. Levine (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers), 75–170.

Kossak, M. (2012). Art-based enquiry: it is what we do! J. Appl. Arts Health 3, 21–29. doi: 10.1386/jaah.3.1.21_1

Lane, R., Ryan, D. L., Nadel, L., and Greenberg, L. (2015). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal, and the process of change in psychotherapy: new insights from brain science. Behav. Brain Sci. 38, 1–64. doi: 10.1017/50140525X14000041

Leavy, P. (2015). Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Levine, S. (2005). “The philosophy of expressive arts therapy: poiesis as a response to the world,” in Principles and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy: Toward a Therapeutic Aesthetics , eds P. J. Knill, E. G. Levine, and S. K. Levine (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers), 15–74.

Lynch, T., Chapman, A. L., Rosenthal, M. Z., Kuo, J. R., and Linnehan, M. M. (2006). Mechanisms of change in dialectical behavior therapy: theoretical and empirical observations. J. Clin. Psychol. 62, 459–480. doi: 10.1002/jclp.20243

McNiff, S. (2008). “Art-based research,” in Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research , eds J. G. Knowles and A. L. Cole (Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications), 29–40.

Ogden, T. (1992). The Matrix of the Mind: Object Relations and the Psychoanalytic Dialogue. London: Karnac Books.

Patterson, S., Crawford, M. J., Ainsworth, E., and Waller, D. (2011). Art therapy for people diagnosed with Schizophrenia: therapists’. Int. J. Art Therapy 16, 70–80. doi: 10.1080/17454832.2011.604038

Petrik, A., and Cronin, T. (2014). Defining and measuring mechanisms of change in psychological therapies: the path not taken. Aust. Psychol. 49, 283–286. doi: 10.1111/ap.12073

Schwartz, H. P. (2012). Intersubjectivity and dialecticism. Int. J. Psychoanal. 93, 401–425. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-8315.2011.00543.x

Stern, D. (2005). “Intersubjectivity,” in The American Psychiatric Association Publishing Textbook of Psychoanalysis , eds S. Person, A. M. Cooper, and G. O. Gabbard (Arlington: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.), 77–91.

Symington, N. (1996). The Making of a Psychotherapist. London: Karnac Books.

Van Lith, T. (2015). Art making as a mental health recovery tool for change and coping. Art Ther. J. Am. Art Ther. Assoc. 32, 5–12. doi: 10.1080/07421656.2015.992826

Viega, M. (2016). Science as art: axiology as a central component in methodology and evaluation of Arts-Based Research (ABR). Music Ther. Perspect. 34, 4–13. doi: 10.1093/mtp/miv043

Zittoun, T. (2011). Meaning and change in psychotherapy. Int. Psychol. Behav. 45, 325–334. doi: 10.1007/s12124-011-9166-7

Keywords : mechanisms of change, transformation, psychotherapy, creative arts therapies, arts-based research

Citation: Gerber N, Bryl K, Potvin N and Blank CA (2018) Arts-Based Research Approaches to Studying Mechanisms of Change in the Creative Arts Therapies. Front. Psychol. 9:2076. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02076

Received: 22 May 2018; Accepted: 09 October 2018; Published: 01 November 2018.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2018 Gerber, Bryl, Potvin and Blank. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Nancy Gerber, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

What is Art? - A research on the concept and perception of Art in the 21st Century

The concept of Art and Artist has had a continuous evolution and countless definitions throughout history. But, are there really common concepts to define and perceive them in ancient and classic art as well as in modern? This thesis focuses on the current (year 2017) perception of what is considered art and what is considered an artist by ordinary people, out of what art and philosophy books tell.

Related Papers

Most modern definitions of art fail to successfully address the issue of the ever-changing nature of art, and rarely even attempt to provide an account which would be valid in more than just the modern Western context. This article develops a new theory which preserves the advantages of its predecessors, solves or avoids their problems, and has a scope wide enough to account for art of different times and cultures. An object is art in a given context, it is argued, iff some person(s) culturally competent in this context afforded it the status of a candidate for appreciation for reasons considered good in this context. This weakly institutional view is supplemented by auxiliary definitions explaining the notions of cultural contexts, competence and good reasons for affording the status. The relativisation to contexts brings increased explanatory power and scope, and the ability to account for the diversity of art.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Journal of Arts and Humanities

Zachary Isrow

Art is a creative phenomenon which changes constantly, not just insofar as it is being created continually, but also in the very meaning of ‘art.’ Finding a suitable definition of art is no easy task and it has been the subject of much inquiry throughout artistic expression. This paper suggests a crucial distinction between ‘art forms’ and ‘forms of art’ is necessary in order to better understand art. The latter of these corresponds to that which we would typically call art such as painting, singing, etc. The former corresponds to the form out of which these take shape, movement, speech, etc. With this distinction set out, it becomes clearer that art and the aesthetic is rooted in the properties of the ‘thing’ such as the color, shape, and the texture, rather than the product of creation itself. Thus, the future of art will bring a new aesthetic in which these properties become recognized as art and as such there will be an aesthetic of everyday life.

Jakob Zaaiman

The traditional conception of art is about sensual beauty and refined taste; modern art on the other hand has introduced an entirely unexpected dimension to the visual arts, namely that of 'revelatory narrative'. Classical art aspires to present works which can be appreciated as sensually beautiful; modern art, when it succeeds, presents us instead with the unsettling narrative. This radical difference in artistic purpose is something relatively new, and not yet fully appreciated or understood.

Journal of the Institute of Engineering

Alexandra Mouriki

Thomas Adajian

Roczniki Kulturoznawcze

Andrzej Derdziuk

The presented statement is part of the volume it covers a variety of responses from people who interact with art in different ways. The aim is to suggest to the participant of the contemporary world a new, personal perspective to rethink what is this area of our world that we label with art; thoughts with and without theoretical suggestions - reflections by the creators and reflections by the audience, teaching humility and uniqueness, perhaps - forming a fresh perspective on art.

RELATED PAPERS

Matthias Van Hoey

Proceedings of 36th International Cosmic Ray Conference — PoS(ICRC2019)

Matteo Battisti

Interciencia

Lucía Simón

Tạp chí Khoa học và Công nghệ Biển

GSC Advanced Research and Reviews

Artificial Neural Networks - Application

Adriano Siqueira

Journal of Biological Chemistry

John Cidlowski

Bionatura (Ibarra - Impresa)

Nadhim Abdullah , Hamed A . Hamdi

Administração Pública e Gestão Social

Sandro Cabral

加急办理cus毕业证书 美国西雅图城市大学毕业证荣誉学位证书原版一模一样

Clinical Rheumatology

Vladislav Lushpa

Buckingham文凭证书 白金汉大学毕业证

International Journal of Advance Research, Ideas and Innovations in Technology

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics

Nicolas Chauvin

Journal of Forest Science

Michal Hejcman

Research in Immunology

R. Andreesen

Journal of Fungi

Volkmar Passoth

Warta Dharmawangsa

Mukhrizal Effendi

SHS Web of Conferences

Adeline Patard

Dune Two: A Masterpiece Through the Lens of Traditionalism

Ezio N Salimbeni

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Creative brain and abstract art: A quantitative study on Kandinskij paintings

Ieee account.

• Change Username/Password
• Update Address

Purchase Details

• Payment Options
• Order History
• View Purchased Documents

Profile Information

• Communications Preferences
• Profession and Education
• Technical Interests
• US & Canada: +1 800 678 4333
• Worldwide: +1 732 981 0060
• Contact & Support
• About IEEE Xplore
• Accessibility
• Terms of Use
• Nondiscrimination Policy
• Privacy & Opting Out of Cookies

A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. © Copyright 2024 IEEE - All rights reserved. Use of this web site signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it's official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings
• Browse Titles

NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

Uttley L, Scope A, Stevenson M, et al. Systematic review and economic modelling of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of art therapy among people with non-psychotic mental health disorders. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2015 Mar. (Health Technology Assessment, No. 19.18.)

Systematic review and economic modelling of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of art therapy among people with non-psychotic mental health disorders.

Chapter 2 clinical effectiveness of art therapy: quantitative systematic review.

This chapter aims to provide an overview of the evidence examining the clinical effectiveness of art therapy in people with non-psychotic mental health disorders.

• Literature search methods

Bibliographic database searching

Comprehensive literature searches were used to inform the quantitative, qualitative and cost-effectiveness reviews. A search strategy was developed to identify reviews, RCTs, economic evaluations, qualitative research and all other study types relating to art therapy. Methodological search filters were applied where appropriate. No other search limitations were used and all databases were searched from inception to present. Searches were conducted from May to July 2013. The full search strategies can be found in Appendix 2 .

To ensure that the full breadth of literature for the non-psychotic population was included, it was pragmatic to search for all art therapy studies and then subsequently exclude studies manually (through the sifting process) that were conducted in people with a psychotic disorder or a disorder in which symptoms of psychosis were reported. It is therefore possible for the reviewer to view all potentially relevant records available and manually exclude studies of samples with psychotic disorders. This method of searching through the literature is in contrast to an approach that uses a search strategy listing all possible mental health disorders that are considered to be ‘non-psychotic’ in the search terms. The latter method may not retrieve all relevant studies from populations that are not indexed under the named mental health disorders.

In addition to the range of conditions covered by the population, the evidence from the studies being generated was frequently not a clear-cut diagnosed ‘mental health disorder’ and the populations retrieved were not the clinical populations of common mental health problems that were first anticipated. At this point in the study identification process it would have been easy to exclude any study that did not include patients with a clinically diagnosed mental health disorder. If this approach had been taken, there would have been three studies in the quantitative review. Instead a pragmatic approach was taken by identifying, including and describing the populations that art therapy is being studied in, with reference to targeting mental health symptoms (see Chapter 1 , Non-psychotic mental health population: definition ).

Databases searched

• MEDLINE and MEDLINE In-Process & Other Non-Indexed citations (OvidSP).
• EMBASE (OvidSP).
• Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (The Cochrane Library).
• Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library).
• Database of Abstracts of Review of Effects (The Cochrane Library).
• NHS Economic Evaluation Database (The Cochrane Library).
• Health Technology Assessment Database (The Cochrane Library).
• Science Citation Index (Web of Science via Web of Knowledge).
• Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science via Web of Knowledge).
• CINAHL: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (EBSCO host ).
• PsycINFO (OvidSP).
• AMED: Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (OvidSP).
• ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ProQuest).

Sensitive keyword strategies using free-text and, where available, thesaurus terms using Boolean operators and database-specific syntax were developed to search the electronic databases. Date limits or language restrictions were not used on any database. All resources were searched from inception to May 2013.

Grey literature searching

A number of sources were searched to identify any relevant grey literature. Relevant grey literature or unpublished evidence would include reports and dissertations that report sufficient details of the methods and results of the study to permit quality assessment. Conference proceedings without a corresponding final report (published or unpublished) would not qualify for inclusion, as they are unlikely to contain sufficient information to permit quality assessment and can often be different to results published in the final report. 39 , 40

Sources searched

• NHS Evidence (Guidelines): www.evidence.nhs.uk/ .
• The BAAT: www.baat.org/index.html .
• UK Clinical Research Network Portfolio Database: public.ukcrn.org.uk/Search/Portfolio.aspx .
• National Research Register Archive: www.nihr.ac.uk/Pages/NRRArchive.aspx .
• Current Controlled Trials: www.controlled-trials.com/ .
• OpenGrey: www.opengrey.eu/ .
• Google Scholar: scholar.google.co.uk/ .
• Mind: www.mind.org.uk/ .
• International Art Therapy Organisation: www.internationalarttherapy.org/ .
• National Coalition of Arts Therapies Associations: www.nccata.org/ .

Additional search methods

A hand search of the International Journal of Art Therapy (formerly Inscape ) was conducted. The additional search methods of reference list checking and citation searching of the included studies were utilised. Other complementary search methods were considered such as pearl growing; however, because the search method employed was considered to be very inclusive, such additional methods were unlikely to generate additional relevant records.

• Review methods

Screening and eligibility

The operational sifting criteria (eligibility criteria) were defined and verified by two reviewers (LU and AS). Titles and abstracts of all records generated from the searches were scrutinised by one assessor and checked by a second assessor to identify studies for possible inclusion into the quantitative review. All studies identified for inclusion at abstract stage were obtained in full text for more detailed appraisal. Non-English studies were translated and included if relevant. For conference abstracts or clinical trial records without study data, authors were contacted via e-mail; however, no additional data were retrieved by contacting study authors. There was no exclusion on the basis of quality. If closer assessment of studies at full text indicated that eligible studies were not RCTs, then the studies were excluded. Agreement on inclusion, for 20% of the total search results ( n  = 2015), was calculated at title/abstract sift demonstrating 0.93 agreement using the kappa statistic. If there was uncertainty regarding the inclusion of a study, the reviewers sought the opinion of the team members with the relevant clinical, methodological or subject expertise to guide the decision.

Accumulation of results

All references were accumulated in a database using Reference Manager Version 12 (Thomson Reuters, Philadelphia, PA, USA), enabling studies to be retrieved in categories by keyword searches and duplicates to be removed.

Study appraisal

Two reviewers (LU and AS) performed data extraction independently for all included papers and discrepancies were resolved by discussion between reviewers. When necessary, authors of the studies were contacted for further information. Data were input into a data extraction template using Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA), which was designed for the purpose of this review and verified by two reviewers. Information related to study population, sample size, intervention, comparators, potential biases in the conduct of the trial, outcomes including adverse events, follow-up and methods of statistical analysis was abstracted from the published papers directly into the electronic data extraction spreadsheet.

The evidence generated from the comprehensive searches highlighted that the majority of research in art therapy is conducted by or with art therapists. This indicates potential researcher allegiance towards the intervention in that art therapists are likely to have a vested interest in the output of the study. For this reason it was deemed important to focus on the highest quality evidence available from the study literature. Trials that were non-randomised (i.e. in which the researcher was able to select and allocate participants to treatment arms) were considered to be too low in methodological rigour to be included in this review. The consequence of including data from non-randomised studies into the review is that the resulting data are biased and therefore not robust or sufficient to inform and contribute to the evidence base. 41 , 42 The inclusion and exclusion criteria for the quantitative review are shown in Figure 2 .

Eligibility criteria for the quantitative review.

Studies could be conducted in any setting, including primary, secondary, community based or inpatient.

Study selection was not limited by the number of sessions, and studies that provided the intervention in a single session were included.

Timing of outcome assessment

Post-treatment outcomes and outcomes at reported follow-up points were extracted and summarised when reported.

Quality assessment strategy

Quality assessment of included RCTs was performed for all studies independently by two reviewers using quality assessment criteria adapted from the Cochrane risk of bias, 44 Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) guidance 45 and Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) 46 checklists to develop a modified tool for the purpose of this review. The modified tool was developed to incorporate relevant elements across several tools to allow comprehensive and relevant quality assessment for the included trials. Judgements and corresponding reasons for judgements for each quality criterion for all studies were stated explicitly and recorded. Risk of bias was assessed to be low, high or unclear. Where insufficient details were reported to make a judgement, risk of bias was stated to be unclear and authors were not contacted for further details. Discrepancies in judgements were resolved by discussion between the two reviewers.

• Results of the quantitative review

The total number of published articles yielded from electronic database searches after duplicates were removed was 10,073 (see Figure 3 ). An additional 197 records were identified from supplementary searches, resulting in a total of 10,270 records for screening. Of these, 10,221 records were excluded at title/abstract screening. Common reasons for exclusion from the review can be seen in Table 1 . A full list of the studies excluded from the quantitative review at full text stage (with reasons for exclusion) can be found in Appendix 3 .

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) flow diagram of studies included in the quantitative review.

Common reasons for exclusion from the review

The grey literature searches yielded very few potentially relevant records that were not generated by the electronic searches. One record appeared highly relevant to the research question and related to a clinical trial record of and RCT of art therapy in personality disorder (CREATe) for which the status was ‘ongoing’. However, e-mail contact with the primary investigator of this trial confirmed that the trial had been terminated because of poor recruitment.

• Included studies: quantitative review

Fifteen RCTs were identified for inclusion into the review which were reported in 18 sources (see Table 2 ). For clarity in this comparison, where a study with multiple sources is discussed only one of the sources has been noted.

Description of 15 included RCTs

Ten out of the 15 included studies were conducted in the USA, while only one study was conducted in the UK (see Tables 2 and 3 ). Eleven of the studies were conducted in adults (who are the primary focus of this review) and four were conducted in children. All trials had small final sample sizes with the number of participants reported to be included in each study ranging between 18 and 111. The mean sample size was 52.

Comparators across the 15 included studies

Three studies are of patients from the target population of people with non-psychotic mental disorders. 47 – 49 Of these three studies, only one was conducted in adults. 47

In the remaining 12 studies, the study population comprised individuals without a formal mental health diagnosis. 49 – 59 , 61 , 62 The populations in these studies are, therefore, mainly people with long-term medical conditions which are not reported to be accompanied by a mental health diagnosis; however, outcomes targeted in these studies were mental health symptoms.

The total number of patients in the included studies is 777. Nine studies compared art therapy with an active control group and six studies compared art therapy with a wait-list control or treatment as usual.

Two studies were reported to be conducted in an inpatient setting 48 , 49 and one study was conducted in prison. 59 The majority of studies were conducted in community/outpatient setting, although the precise setting for conducting the intervention was not reported in six studies. 50 , 52 , 54 – 56 , 61

Brief descriptions of the art therapy interventions are provided in Tables 4 and 5 .

Description of intervention and control in studies with active control

Description of intervention in studies with non-active control

Study duration ranged between the 15 studies from 1 session to 40 sessions, with a mean number of nine sessions (see Tables 4 and 5 ). Most studies with an active control group were of ‘group’ art therapy. One study which was a ‘brief’ intervention consisting of one individual session per participant. 56 Two studies did not state explicitly if sessions were in a group or individual. 47 , 53 Three studies with no active control were group art therapy 58 , 59 , 61 and three studies were individual art therapy. 49 , 55 , 62

The symptoms or outcome domains under investigation and associated outcome measures are reported in Table 6 .

Outcome domains under investigation in the 15 included RCTs

• Data synthesis

Heterogeneity of the included studies

The study populations are heterogeneous ( Figure 4 ), highlighting the wide application of art therapy in this small number of included RCTs but also demonstrating the difficulty in obtaining a pooled estimate of treatment effect. In this respect the clinical profile of patients can be regarded as a potential treatment effect modifier.

Patient clinical profiles in the 15 included RCTs.

The control groups across the included studies are heterogeneous ( Figure 5 ); therefore, there may be different estimates of treatment effects depending on what art therapy is compared against. Creating a network meta-analysis, which would incorporate all relevant evidence for all the comparators, for all non-psychotic mental health disorders, would be beyond the remit for this research project.

Comparator arms in the 15 included RCTs.

In addition, despite common mental health symptoms being investigated across the included RCTs, the majority of studies were using different measurement scales to assess these outcomes ( Table 7 ). Therefore, as there are insufficient comparable data on outcome measure across studies, it is not possible to perform a formal pooled analysis.

Instruments used in the 15 included RCTs

Potential treatment effect modifiers in the included studies

As well as the patient’s clinical profile, several other treatment effect modifiers can be identified from the included studies.

Experience/qualification of the art therapist

Twelve of the 15 included studies stated that the art therapy was delivered by one or more art therapists. One study was reported in three sources to use a ‘trained’ art therapist. 62 – 64 One study reported the art therapist as ‘licensed’. 56 Two studies reported using a ‘qualified’ art therapist. 48 , 57 Two studies reported using a ‘certified’ art therapist. 50 , 53 One study was reported in two sources as using a ‘registered’ art therapist. 60 , 61 One study reported using ‘experienced art psychotherapists’. 47 Four studies simply stated ‘art therapist’ without reference to accreditation. 49 , 52 , 58 , 59 One study stated that the sessions were run by one artist and two speech therapists. 51 One study stated that the sessions were run by two mental health counsellors. 55 One study did not state whether or not an art therapist was involved. 54 While there was considerable variability in the reporting of the accreditation of the therapist, most studies were conducted by a person who was considered to be qualified as an art therapist.

Individual versus group art therapy

The majority of RCTs are of group art therapy with only 4 of the 15 RCTs examining individual art therapy. 49 , 55 , 56 , 62

Eleven RCTs are of adults and four RCTs are of children or adolescents. 48 , 49 , 50 , 58

Five RCTs involved only women, 47 , 54 , 55 , 61 , 62 and one RCT only men. 59 In the remaining nine RCTs the subjects were of mixed gender.

Pre-existing physical condition

In nine studies patients had pre-existing physical conditions. 50 , 51 , 54 – 58 , 61 , 62 The remaining six studies involved people who were depressed, 47 , 59 people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 48 , 49 or older people. 52 , 53

Other potential treatment effect modifiers which are not fully explored in the included RCTs include duration of disease (mental or physical), underlying reason for mental health disorder and patient preference for art therapy.

Owing to the degree of clinical heterogeneity across the studies and the lack of comparable data on outcome measures, meta-analysis was not appropriate. Therefore, the synthesis of data is limited to a narrative review to analyse the robustness of the data, which includes trial summaries as well as tabulation of results.

Study summaries

This section provides short overviews of each study with reference to statistically significant differences between groups that were reported in each of the studies.

Beebe et al. 2010 58

This was a RCT in children ( n  = 22) with asthma of art therapy versus wait-list control. Sessions lasting 60 minutes were provided once a week for seven weeks. Outcomes were measured at baseline, immediately following completion of therapy and 6 months after the final session. Targeted variables were quality of life (QoL) and behavioural and emotional adaptation. Outcome measurement tools were the Paediatric QoL asthma module and Beck Youth Inventories. Pre- and post-test scores were compared between groups using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Dunnett’s test. Compared with baseline scores, the intervention group showed a significant reduction in 4 out of 10 QoL items at 7 weeks and in 2 out of 10 QoL items at 6 months. Significant improvement relative to the control group was found in two out of five items of the Beck Youth Inventory at 7 weeks and in one out of five items at 6 months.

Broome et al. 2001 50

This was a three-arm RCT in children and adolescents ( n  = 97) with sickle cell disease of art therapy versus CBT (relaxation for pain) or attention control (fun activities). Group sessions were provided over 4 weeks. Outcomes were measured at baseline and at 4 weeks and 12 months. The targeted variable was coping and the authors hypothesised that coping strategies would increase after attending a self-care intervention. Outcome measures were the Schoolagers’ Coping Strategies Inventory and Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experiences scores and numbers of emergency room visits, clinic visits and hospital admissions. The number of coping strategies used was analysed at three time points using Pearson’s correlations, independent t -tests and ANOVA. Coping strategies increased in children and adolescents in all three groups, but data regarding the difference between the intervention and control groups were not reported.

Chapman et al. 2001 49

This RCT of brief art therapy versus treatment as usual was carried out in children ( n  = 85) hospitalised with PTSD. A 1-hour individual session was provided but the number of sessions was not reported. Outcomes were measured at baseline and at 1 week, 1 month, and 6 and 12 months (in children who were still symptomatic). The targeted symptom was PTSD. The outcome measurement tool was Children’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Index (PTSD-I). The method of statistical analysis was not described. No significant differences were found between groups, but a non-significant trend towards greater reduction in PTSD-I scores was observed in the intervention group relative to the control group.

Gussak 2007 59

This was a RCT in incarcerated adult males ( n  = 44) of art therapy versus no treatment. Eight weekly group sessions were provided. Outcomes were measured pre- and post-test (exact time points not reported). The targeted symptom was depression. The outcome measure was the Beck Depression Inventory-Short Form (BDI-II). The change in BDI-II scores from pre-test to post test was calculated and differences between groups analysed using independent-samples t -tests. Depression was significantly lower in the intervention group than in the control group post test.

Hattori et al. 2011 51

This was a RCT in Alzheimer disease ( n  = 39) of art therapy versus a ‘simple calculation’ control group. Twelve 45-minute weekly sessions were provided (individual/group not reported). Outcomes were measured at baseline and at 12 weeks. Targeted variables were mood, vitality, behavioural impairment, QoL, activities of daily living and cognitive function. Outcome measures were the Mini Mental State Examination Score (MMSE), the Wechsler Memory Scale revised; the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS); the Apathy Scale (Japanese version); Short Form questionnaire-8 items (SF-8) – Physical (PCS-8) and Mental (MCS-8) components; the Barthel Index; the Dementia Behaviour Disturbance Scale; and the Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview. Outcomes were measured at baseline and 12 weeks. The percentage of responders who showed a 10% or greater improvement relative to baseline score before the intervention was compared between groups using a chi-squared test. A significant improvement in the intervention group was seen in MCS-8 subscale of the SF-8 and the Apathy Scale. The control group showed a significant improvement in MMSE relative to the intervention group. No significant differences between groups in other items were reported.

Kim 2013 52

This RCT in older adults ( n  = 50) compared art therapy with regular programme activities. Between 8 and 12 sessions lasting 60–75 minutes were provided over 4 weeks. Targeted variables were positive/negative affect, state–trait anxiety and self-esteem. Outcomes were measured using the Positive & Negative Affect Schedule, the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Time points for measurement were not reported (assumed 4 weeks). Independent group t -tests were performed to compare pre- and post-test scores between groups. Significant improvements in the intervention were seen in all three outcomes compared with the control group.

Lyshak-Stelzer et al. 2007 48

This RCT in adolescents ( n  = 29) with PTSD compared art therapy with arts and crafts activities. Sixteen weekly group sessions were provided. The targeted symptom was PTSD. Outcome measurement tools were the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) PTSD Reaction Index ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fourth Edition, Child Version) (primary measure) and milieu behavioural measures (e.g. use of restraints). Measurement time points were not reported, but data at two years were provided. Pre- and post-test scores were compared between groups using repeated-measures ANOVA. The intervention was significantly better than control at reducing PTSD symptoms, according to the UCLA PTSD Reaction Index.

McCaffrey et al. 2011 53

This was a RCT in older adults ( n  = 39) of art therapy versus garden walking (individual and group). Twelve 60-minute sessions (group/individual not reported) were provided over 6 weeks. The targeted symptom was depression. The outcome measurement tool was the GDS. Pre- and post-test scores were compared between groups using repeated-measures ANOVA. Measurement was at baseline and 6 weeks. Depression significantly improved from baseline in all three groups with no significant differences between groups.

Monti and Peterson 2004; 60 Monti et al. 2006 61

This RCT in women with cancer ( n  = 111) compared mindfulness-based art therapy with wait-list control. The trial was sized to have 80% power to detect a standardised effect size of 0.62. Eight 150-minute group sessions were provided over 8 weeks. Targeted variables were distress, depression, anxiety and QoL. Outcome measurement tools were the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), the Global Severity Index (GSI) and the Short Form questionnaire-36 items (SF-36). Measurement was at baseline and at 8 weeks and 16 weeks. Pre-and post-test measures were compared between groups using mixed-effects repeated-measures ANOVA. A significant decrease in symptoms of distress and highly significant improvements in some areas of the QoL scale were observed in the intervention group compared with the control group.

Monti et al. 2012 54

This RCT of women with breast cancer ( n  = 18) compared mindfulness-based art therapy with educational support (control group). Eight 150-minute weekly group sessions were provided. The targeted symptom was anxiety but the authors were interested in whether or not cerebral blood flow (CBF) correlated with experimental condition. The primary outcome measurement was functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) CBF and the correlation with anxiety using SCL-90-R. Measurement was at baseline and within 2 weeks of the end of the 8-week programme. The method of statistical analysis was not described and the effectiveness of the intervention was not the primary outcome. Anxiety was reduced in the intervention group but not in the control group. CBF on fMRI changed in certain brain areas in the art therapy group only. It should be noted that patients with a confirmed diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder were excluded from this study.

Puig et al. 2006 55

This was a RCT in women with breast cancer ( n  = 39) of art therapy versus delayed treatment. Four 60-minute weekly sessions were provided. Targeted symptoms were anger, confusion, depression, fatigue, anxiety, activity and coping. The outcomes, the Profile of Mood States and the Emotional Approach Coping Scale (EACS) scores, were measured before and 2 weeks after the intervention. Pre- and post-test scores were compared between groups using ANOVA. The intervention group showed significant improvements in the anger, confusion, depression and anxiety mood states but fatigue and activity were not significantly different between the groups. In the intervention group, EACS coping scores increased, but were not significantly different from those in the delayed treatment control group.

Rao et al. 2009 56

In this RCT in adults with HIV/AIDS ( n  = 79), the intervention group received brief art therapy while the controls watched a video tape on the uses of art therapy. Only one 60-minute session of individual art therapy was provided. Targeted symptoms were anxiety and physical symptoms, including pain. The outcome measures used were Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) scores (primary outcome) and STAI scores. Pre-and post-test scores were compared between groups using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and adjusted for age, gender and ethnicity. Measurements were recorded before and immediately after the intervention or control session. The intervention group experienced significant improvements in physical symptoms (ESAS) compared with the control group, but anxiety was not significantly different between the groups.

Rusted et al. 2006 57

In this RCT in adults with dementia ( n  = 45), art therapy was compared with an activity group control. Forty 60-minute weekly group sessions were provided. Targeted symptoms were depression, mood, sociability and physical involvement. Outcome measures were the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia the Multi Observational Scale for the Elderly, MMSE, The Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test, Tests of Everyday Attention and the Benton Fluency Task. Measurements were recorded at baseline, 10 weeks, 20 weeks, 40 weeks and at follow-up at 44 and 56 weeks. Pre- and post-test scores were compared between groups using ANOVA with time of assessment as repeated measures. At 40 weeks, the intervention group was significantly more depressed than the control group, but this effect was reduced at follow-up. However, groups were not comparable at baseline, as the art therapy group were more depressed at the beginning of the study than the control group.

Thyme et al. 2007 47

This was a RCT in depressed female adults ( n  = 39) of psychodynamic art therapy versus verbal dynamic psychotherapy. Ten 60-minute weekly sessions (individual/group not reported) were provided. Targeted symptoms were stress reactions after a range of traumatic events, mental health symptoms and depression. Outcome measurements were Impact of Event Scale, Symptom-Checklist-90 (SCL-90), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Hamilton Rating Scale of Depression scores. Measurements were recorded at baseline, at 10 weeks and at a 3-month follow-up. All patients improved from baseline on all scales ( p  < 0.001). There were no significant differences between groups so art therapy was not significantly different to the comparator at either time point.

Thyme et al. 2009; 62 Svensk et al. 2009; 63 Oster et al. 2006 64

This RCT in women with breast cancer ( n  = 41) compared art therapy with treatment as usual as a control. Five 60-minute weekly individual session were provided. Targeted symptoms were depression, anxiety, somatic, general symptoms, QoL and coping methods. Outcome measure tools were the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior, the GSI, the SCL-90, the World Health Organization (WHO) QoL instrument – Swedish version, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QoL Questionnaire-BR23 and the Coping Resources Inventory (CRI). Measurements were recorded at baseline and at 2 months and 6 months. The intervention significantly improved depressive, anxiety, somatic and general symptoms compared with the control. Pre- and post-test scores were compared between groups using t -tests, ANOVA and linear regression. On the WHOQoL, scores on the overall, general health and environmental domains at 6 months were significantly higher in the intervention group than in the control group. There were no significant differences between groups on the EORTC. In the intervention group, the score on only the ‘social’ dimension of the CRI was increased relative to the control group.

Findings of the included studies

The directions of statistically significant results from the 15 included RCTs are summarised in Table 8 .

Summary of the direction of findings from the 15 included studies

As can be seen in Table 8 , in 14 of the 15 included studies there were improvements from baseline in some outcomes in the art therapy groups. However, both the intervention and the control groups improved from baseline in four studies, with no significant difference between the groups. 47 , 49 , 50 , 53 The control groups across these four studies were verbal psychodynamic psychotherapy, 47 treatment as usual, 49 CBT 50 and garden walking, 53 and verbal psychodynamic psychotherapy, respectively.

In eight studies, art therapy was significantly better than the control group for some but not all outcome measures. Table 9 shows the results according to the mean change from baseline between groups in these eight studies.

Nine included studies with statistically significant findings in the art therapy group in some but not all outcome measures

In one study, 52 all outcomes were significantly better in the art therapy intervention group than in the control group. Table 10 shows the results from the Kim 52 study.

One included study with statistically positive findings for all outcomes in the art therapy group

In one study 57 of a sample of people with dementia, outcomes were worse for the art therapy group than for the control group, which was an activity control group. An unusual pattern of results is presented, including a significant increase in anxious/depressed mood ( p  < 0.01) at 40 weeks which was not present at the 10- or 20-week time points and dissipated by 44 and 56 weeks. The authors discuss several reasons for this result including the high level of attrition; the reliance on observer ratings in the frail and elderly sample (and subsequent potential impact of observer bias); the increased depression as a response to the sessions ending; and the possibility that art therapy was contraindicated in this sample.

Narrative subgroup analysis of studies by mental health outcome domains

Table 11 presents the results for effectiveness of art therapy across relevant mental health outcome domains.

Effectiveness of art therapy across mental health outcome domains

Among the nine studies examining depression, 47 , 51 , 53 , 55 , 57 – 59 , 61 , 62 art therapy resulted in significant reduction in depression in six studies. 47 , 53 , 55 , 59 , 61 , 62 In four of these six studies, 55 , 59 , 61 , 62 art therapy was significantly more effective than the control. Data relating to significant differences are reported in Table 9 .

Among the seven studies examining anxiety, 52 , 54 – 56 , 58 , 61 , 62 art therapy resulted in significant reduction of anxiety in six studies. 52 , 54 , 55 , 58 , 61 , 62 In these six studies, art therapy was significantly more effective than the control. Data relating to significant differences are reported in Tables 8 and 9 .

Among the four studies examining mood or affect, 51 , 52 , 55 , 57 art therapy resulted in significant positive improvements to mood in three studies. 51 , 52 , 55 In these three studies, art therapy was significantly more effective than the control. Data relating to significant differences are reported in Tables 8 and 9 .

Among the three studies examining trauma, 47 – 49 art therapy resulted in significant reduction of symptoms of trauma in all studies. While trauma improved from baseline, there was no significant difference between the art therapy and control groups in any of the three studies.

Among the three studies examining distress, 47 , 61 , 62 art therapy resulted in significant reduction of distress in all studies. In two studies, 61 , 62 art therapy was significantly more effective than the control group. Data relating to significant differences are reported in Table 9 .

Quality of life

In the four studies examining QoL, 51 , 58 , 61 , 62 art therapy resulted in significant improvements to some but not all components of the QoL measures in all studies. In all studies, art therapy was significantly more effective than the control. Data relating to significant differences are reported in Table 9 .

Among the three studies examining coping, 50 , 55 , 62 art therapy resulted in significant improvements to coping resources in all studies. In one study, 62 art therapy was significantly more effective than the control. In another study, there was no difference between groups. 55 In the third study, significant differences between the art therapy and control groups were not reported. 50 Data relating to significant differences are reported in Table 9 .

In the one study examining cognition, 51 the control group (simple calculations) exhibited significant improvements in cognitive function relative to the art therapy group. Data relating to significant differences are reported in Table 9 .

Self-esteem

In the one study examining self-esteem, 52 art therapy resulted in significant improvements in self-esteem relative to the control group. Data relating to significant differences are reported in Tables 9 and 10 .

• Adverse events

Adverse events were not reported in any of the included RCTs. However, three studies reported outcomes that may be indirectly related to the safety of art therapy. The Lyshak-Stelzer et al. 48 study reported no significant differences between groups in the number of incidents, seclusions, restraints or ‘PRN [pro re nata, as needed] orders’. The Broome et al. 50 study reported a decrease in emergency room visits, clinic visits and hospital admissions over time in both the art therapy and control groups. In addition, the Beebe et al. 58 study reported equal asthma exacerbation numbers in each group but these occurred after the trial has finished.

The lack of adverse event data in the majority of included studies is not necessarily evidence that there were no adverse events in the included trials. It may indicate only that adverse events were not recorded. Potential harms and negative effects of art therapy are further explored in the qualitative review (see Chapter 3 ).

• Quality assessment: strength of the evidence

Table 12 illustrates the types of study designs and the number of studies included into the quantitative and qualitative reviews.

Study designs and their inclusion into the review

Critical appraisal of the potential sources of bias in the included studies

Method of recruitment.

Participants were typically convenience samples from existing clinical patient groups. Few details were provided on the inclusion/exclusion criteria of the patients in the studies, as can be seen from Table 13 .

Method of participant recruitment in the 15 included RCTs

Allocation bias: Method of randomisation

Table 14 shows the descriptions of randomisation from the included RCTs. Randomisation usually refers to the random assignment of participants to two or more groups. Randomisation was not described in seven studies. 48 – 50 , 54 , 55 , 58 , 59 This information could simply be missing from the published journal paper and, if benefit of the doubt were applied, it could be assumed that proper randomisation may have been done but not reported. This would represent an unclear risk of bias. However, it could also be assumed that proper randomisation did not take place and the method of selecting participants into the studies was flawed. This would represent a high risk of bias. Therefore, there is an unclear/high risk that randomisation was not adequately performed in these six studies.

Description of randomisation from the included RCTs

Allocation bias: allocation concealment

In order to ensure that the sequence of treatment allocation was concealed, a robust method of allocation to the study arms should be undertaken and documented. Allocation concealment was not reported in any of the included studies. Lack of allocation concealment can destroy the purpose of randomisation, as it can permit selective assignment to the study arms.

Appropriate randomisation for allocation to study arms includes undertaking ‘simple’ randomisation (e.g. tossing a coin), which avoids introducing excessive stratification to prevent imbalanced groups, and ‘distance’ randomisation so that researchers are unable to influence allocation (e.g. a central randomisation service which notes basic patient details and issues a treatment allocation). Several of the eight randomisation methods described are likely to be open to allocation bias either because they did not use distance randomisation or because the reports do not provide enough details about what measures were taken to ensure that allocation was truly concealed to the investigators. For example, the Hattori et al. 51 study describes stratification by three variables. Stratifying by more than one variable can be problematic, and stratifying by more than two variables is not advisable. 65 In addition, the Kim 52 study does not clearly describe how randomisation was undertaken. The sealed envelope technique employed in the McCaffrey et al. 53 study is intended to ensure that equal numbers receive the intervention and the control but is vulnerable to subterfuge. Few of the included RCTs reported adequate details of methods of randomisation and, consequently, these studies, as reported, had an unclear risk of allocation bias.

Performance bias: blinding

Blinding of participants was not conducted in any of the included RCTs. Blinding of participants to their experimental condition is understandably unfeasible in trials of psychological therapy as opposed to pharmacological interventions. Therefore, while lack of blinding across the included trials means that the trials are at risk of performance bias, the trials cannot be deemed to be of poor quality on this basis.

Performance bias: baseline comparability

Groups were reported to be comparable at baseline in 7 out of the 15 studies ( Table 15 ). 48 , 51 – 54 , 56 , 62 (Baseline comparability was unclear or not reported and therefore was unable to be assessed in five studies. 47 , 49 , 50 , 55 , 58 ) In three studies, 57 , 59 , 61 patients in the art therapy group appeared to have more severe illness at baseline. These differences could reflect a potential allocation bias resulting from flawed randomisation procedures in the studies.

Baseline comparability between intervention and control groups in the included 15 RCTs

Performance bias: groups treated equally

As blinding was not possible, all studies are at risk of performance bias. In the case of the six studies 49 , 55 , 58 , 59 , 61 , 62 that had wait-list/treatment as usual controls rather than an active comparator group, it can be argued that the groups were not treated equally, as the control groups were not given the time and attention that an active control group would receive. Therefore, the risk of performance bias in the art therapy group is higher in these six studies.

Reporting bias: selective outcome reporting

No studies appeared to have collected data on outcomes that were not reported in the results.

Reporting bias: incomplete outcome data

In three studies, 48 , 54 , 57 outcome data were incomplete, indicating a high risk of reporting bias. The reasons for this were: data on 20% completers only (80% of participants withdrew or were excluded); 48 actual data not provided (only p -values reported); 54 and group numbers not provided at any time point. 57 In four studies the risk of reporting bias was unclear because incomplete outcome data were reported. 49 , 50 , 58 , 59

Detection bias

Blinding of clinical outcome assessment was reported to be conducted in only one study. 58 Therefore, 14 out of the 15 included RCTs are at unclear to high risk of detection bias, as assessors may have influenced the recording of clinical outcomes.

Researcher allegiance

In the Kim 52 study there was only one author, and the two researchers are reported to be art therapists. The author is also a senior art therapist. The Gussak 2007 59 study also has only one author, who is a professor of art therapy. Trials that are published by one author are unlikely to have been conducted as collaborative projects adhering to standards of good clinical practice. The risk of researcher allegiance in these studies is, therefore, high.

The McCaffrey et al. 2011 53 study was funded by the owners of the gardens that were the basis of the comparator. The gardens are profit-making, and participants who completed the study were given 1 year’s free membership. The risk of researcher allegiance for the control group in this study, can, therefore, be considered to be high.

As can be seen from Table 16 , all studies were prone to many instances of unclear risk of bias. Some studies were prone to several instances of high risk of bias. In the context of this review, with the exception of blinding participants, all the risk of bias domains are important to be able to establish internal validity of these trials. Currently the only domain that is at low risk of bias is selective outcome reporting. Owing to the risks of bias highlighted by the critical appraisal of these studies, it can be concluded that the included RCTs are generally of low quality.

Summary of risk of bias (high, low or unclear) in the 15 included quantitative studies

Critical appraisal of other potential sources of confounding

Withdrawals and exclusions are reported in Table 17 .

Withdrawals from the study across the included RCTs

As can be seen from Table 17 , there were only four studies in which all participants completed the trial. 52 , 54 , 55 , 58 While several studies reported substantial numbers of dropouts, only one study reported to be sized with reference to effect size. 61 Considering that the sample sizes in the remaining 14 RCTs are small and not sufficiently powered to account for attrition, these dropouts have a significant impact on the reliability of these RCTs. For example, in the Rusted et al . 57 study, attrition was 53.3%, meaning that the final data are reported for 9 versus 12 people in the art therapy and activity control groups, respectively. This small number of completers calls into question the reliability of this study’s results.

Only 5 of the 11 studies in which dropouts occurred reported the breakdown of withdrawal between groups. Two studies 50 , 59 do not report the reasons for withdrawal in the dropouts that occurred. In addition, attrition was not handled appropriately in the included RCTs as imputation for missing data were generally not reported or were reported to be not conducted except in one study. 62 The risk of attrition bias in the 11 studies where dropouts occurred is, therefore, unclear.

Concomitant treatment

Co-therapy or concomitant medication was not reported in eight trials. 49 – 52 , 55 – 58 In a further two studies, 53 , 61 participants were eligible to take part if in receipt of mental health treatment but the actual data for concomitant therapy (overall or between groups) are not reported.

In the Gussak 59 study, 93% ( n  = 25/27) of participants in the intervention group were taking medication for a mental illness, compared with 27% ( n  = NR) in the control group. In the Thyme et al. 47 study, it was reported that psychopharmacological treatment was an exclusion criterion. It is subsequently stated that ‘in the [art therapy] group, one participant were [sic] prescribed antidepressants during therapy ( n  = 1) and one between termination of therapy and the 3-month follow-up ( n  = 1), and in the [verbal therapy] group three during therapy ( n  = 1) [sic] and two after ( n  = 2). Two participants in VT accepted Body Awareness as an additional treatment during psychotherapy.’ 47

In the Thyme et al. 2009 62 study the usage of antidepressants was self-reported, and therefore this information may be incomplete. In the Chapman et al. 49 study, ‘treatment as usual’ hospital care was defined as the normal and usual course of paediatric care including Child Life services, art therapy, and social work and psychiatric consultations. While only the Monti et al. 2012 54 study reports that use of psychotropic medication was an exclusion criterion, there is generally an unclear/high risk of confounding as a result permitted additional treatment across the included studies.

Treatment fidelity

Sufficient measures to ensure treatment fidelity would include monitoring the therapy sessions through audio or video tapes to allow independent checking. No such measures to ensure that the intervention was being delivered consistently were reported in any of the studies. However, one study 58 does provide an appendix of the content of each session. In addition, one study 61 provides the art therapy programme details in the first of the two resulting publications. 60 Most studies provided brief synopses of the intervention programme and content of the sessions. 48 , 50 , 52 , 54 – 56 , 62 However, some studies provided scant details of what took place in the sessions. 47 , 49 , 51 , 53 , 57 , 66 Moreover, Chapman et al. 49 do not even state how many sessions were provided. Therefore, the included RCTs have unclear risk of poor treatment fidelity.

The risk of bias assessment and the potential areas of confounding including attrition, concomitant treatment and treatment fidelity illustrate that the included trials are generally of low quality and, therefore, the results of the 15 RCTs that are included in the quantitative review should be interpreted with caution. Three studies 47 , 51 , 56 can be considered as being of slightly better quality because there are no instances of high risk of bias (other than blinding, which is a common hurdle in trials of psychological therapy) and at low risk of bias on at least four domains.

Discussion of the quantitative review

The aim of the quantitative systematic review was to assess the evidence of clinical effectiveness of art therapy compared with control for treating non-psychotic mental health disorders. The limited available evidence showed that patients receiving art therapy had significant positive improvements in 14 out of 15 RCTs. In 10 of these studies, art therapy resulted in significantly more improved outcomes than the control, while in four studies art therapy resulted in an improvement from baseline but the improvement in the intervention group was not significantly greater than in the control group. In one study, outcomes were better in the control group than in the art therapy group. Relevant mental health outcome domains that were targeted in the included studies were depression, anxiety, mood, trauma, distress, QoL, coping, cognition and self-esteem. Improvements were frequently reported in each of these symptoms except for cognition.

Limitations of the quantitative evidence

Despite every possible effort to identify all relevant trials, the number of studies that qualified for inclusion was small. Despite a large number of records on art therapy yielded from the searches, very few studies were RCTs, demonstrating a slow uptake of the evidence-based medicine model in this field. The study samples are heterogeneous and few samples can be regarded strictly as the target population for this review – people diagnosed with a mental health condition. The limited selection of mental health disorders in the included study samples means that the external validity to the population with non-psychotic mental health disorders is limited. In addition, the sample sizes are small, and as yet there are no large-scale RCTs of art therapy in non-psychotic mental health disorders. The paucity of RCT evidence means that it is not possible to make generalisations about specific disorders or population characteristics.

The risk assessment of bias highlighted that, although all studies were reported to be RCTs, few studies reported how patients were randomised, and in the majority of studies there were several instances of high risk of bias. Areas of potential confounding frequently associated with the studies included attrition, concomitant treatment and treatment fidelity. Consequently, the internal validity of the included studies is threatened. Owing to the low quality of the 15 RCTs, the results included in the quantitative review should be interpreted with caution. As this systematic review did not search for and include direct evidence about other interventions for non-psychotic mental health disorders, it has not been possible to identify indirect evidence for the effect of art therapy in a mixed treatment comparison within the scope of this research. Therefore, the effectiveness of art therapy compared with other commonly used treatments that have been shown to be effective is unknown. In addition, the underlying mechanisms of action in art therapy remain unclear from this evidence. The qualitative systematic review that is presented in the next chapters will explore the factors that may contribute to the therapeutic action in art therapy.

• Conclusions

From the limited number of studies identified, in patients with different clinical profiles, art therapy was reported to have statistically significant positive effects compared with control in a number of studies. The symptoms most relevant to the review question which were effectively targeted in these studies were depression, anxiety, low mood, trauma, distress, poor QoL, inability to cope and low self-esteem. The small evidence base, consisting of low-quality RCTs, indicated that art therapy was associated with an improvement from baseline in all but one study and was a more effective treatment for at least one outcome than the control groups in the majority of studies.

Included under terms of UK Non-commercial Government License .

• Cite this Page Uttley L, Scope A, Stevenson M, et al. Systematic review and economic modelling of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of art therapy among people with non-psychotic mental health disorders. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2015 Mar. (Health Technology Assessment, No. 19.18.) Chapter 2, Clinical effectiveness of art therapy: quantitative systematic review.
• PDF version of this title (1.3M)

In this Page

Other titles in this collection.

• Health Technology Assessment

Recent Activity

• Clinical effectiveness of art therapy: quantitative systematic review - Systemat... Clinical effectiveness of art therapy: quantitative systematic review - Systematic review and economic modelling of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of art therapy among people with non-psychotic mental health disorders

Your browsing activity is empty.

Activity recording is turned off.

Turn recording back on

Connect with NLM

National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD 20894

Web Policies FOIA HHS Vulnerability Disclosure

Help Accessibility Careers

Participatory Educational Research

Add to my library.

Carrie Danae Bravo Feliz Danielle Dimalanta Kate Ashley Jusay Martina Ysabel Vitug Almighty Tabuena

• Abinuman, A. (2017). What's wrong with Filipino art and why is it under-appreciated? Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Candy. Retrieved from https://www.candymag.com/lifestyle/what-s-wrong-with-filipino-art-and-why-is-it-under-appreciated-a1580-20170722
• Ahmed, T. S. A. (2017). Assessment of students’ awareness of the national heritage (Case study: The preparatory year students at the University of Hail, Saudi Arabia). Cogent Social Sciences, 3(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2017.1306202
• Baraceros, E. L. (2016). Practical research 2. Philippines: Rex Book Store, Inc.
• Chiakiamco, C. (2010). The struggle for Philippine art - then and now. Philippines: Philstar Global Corp. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/lifestyle/arts-and-culture/2010/05/17/575439/struggle-philippine-art-then-and-now
• Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
• Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed). USA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
• David, E .J .R. (2013). Brown skin, white minds: Filipino-American postcolonial psychology. Charlotte, North Carolina, United States: Information Age Publishing.
• Desirazu, N. (2019). The importance of art appreciation. Bangalore: EducationWorld. Retrieved from https://www.educationworld.in/the-importance-of-art-appreciation/
• Eliasson, O. (2016). Why art has the power to change the world. Switzerland: World Economic Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/why-art-has-the-power-to-change-the-world/
• Ishiguro, C., Yokosawa, K., & Okada, T. (2016). Eye movements during art appreciation by students taking a photo creation course. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(1074). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01074
• Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Progress on a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of Emotion. American Psychologist, 46(8), 819-834.
• Leder, H., Gerger, G., Dressler, S., & Schabmann, A. (2012). How art is appreciated. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(1), 2-10. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026396
• Matamoros, S. P. & Sumi, A. (2017). Spanish artistic appreciation methodology in Japan: Learning own culture through art. Going to art museum with kindergarten children. Memoirs of the Faculty of Human Development University of Toyama, 12(1), 21-40.
• Mateo, F. V. (2016). Challenging Filipino colonial mentality with Philippine art. (Unpublished master’s thesis). The University of San Francisco. https://repository.usfca.edu/thes/196
• Mercado, A. (2018). Is the Philippines still interested in contemporary art? Philippines: Philstar Global Corp. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/lifestyle/arts-and-culture/2018/12/03/1873577/philippines-still-interested-contemporary-art
• National Commission for Culture and the Arts (2016). Arts awake: Measuring the state of Philippine culture. Cebu City, Philippines: SunStar Publishing Inc. Retrieved from https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/68334/Lifestyle/Arts-awake-Measuring-the-state-of-Philippine-culture
• Nova Southeastern University (2020). Mixed methods. USA: Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice, Nova Southeastern University.
• Oclos, A. (2018). Archie Oclos: Social awareness through street art and the beauty and chaos of Philippine life. Native Province. Retrieved from https://www.nativeprovince.com/blogs/news/archie-oclos
• Papouli, E. (2017). The role of arts in raising ethical awareness and knowledge of the European refugee crisis among social work students. An example from the classroom. Social Work Education, 36(7), 775-793. http://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2017.1353074
• Pelowski. M., Markey, P. S., Lauring, J.O., Leder, H. (2016). Visualizing the impact of art: An update and comparison of current psychological models of art experience. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10(160). http://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00160
• Perez, M. J. V. & Templeza, M. R. (2012). Local studies centers: Transforming history, culture and heritage in the Philippines. IFLA World Library and Information Congress. Retrieved from https://www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2012/180-perez-en.pdf
• Postma, S. (2018). Recovering beauty in art. Scott Postma. Retrieved from https://www.scottpostma.net/2018/04/25/recovering-beauty-in-art/
• Rudd, M. A. (2015). Awareness of Humanities, Arts and Social Science (HASS) research is related to patterns of citizens’ community and cultural engagement. Social Sciences, 4(2), 313-338. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4020313
• Scherer, K. R., Shorr, A. & Johnstone, T. (ed) (2001). Appraisal processes in emotion: theory, methods, research. Canary, NC: Oxford University Press
• Sova, R. B. (2015). Art appreciation as a learned competence: A museum-based qualitative study of adult art specialist and art non-specialist visitors. Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal, 5(4), 141-157.
• Tabuena, A. C. (2019). Effectiveness of classroom assessment techniques in improving performance of students in music and piano. Global Researchers Journal, 6(1), 68-78.
• Tabuena, A. C., Bartolome, J. E. M. B. & Taboy D. K. R. (2020). Preferred teaching practices among junior high school teachers and its impact towards readiness of grade seven students in the secondary school. International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development, 4(4), 588-596. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4105703
• Untivero, D. (2017). Protecting our Filipino heritage. Tatler Asia Limited. Retrieved from https://ph.asiatatler.com/life/Protecting-Our-Filipino-Heritage
• Vanner, C. & Kimani, M. (2017). The role of triangulation in sensitive art-based research with children. Qualitative Research Journal, 17(2), 77-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-12-2016-0073
• Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution. NY: Norton
• Zimmermann, K. A. (2017). What is culture? Live Science. Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-definition-of-culture.html

Inclination State on the Philippine Culture and Arts Using the Appraisal Theory: Factors of Progress and Deterioration

This study aimed to examine the inclination state among selected Filipinos using the Appraisal Theory in evaluating the appreciation level as an advocacy perspective towards the Philippine culture and arts. This study employed a transformative mixed method research design, both quantitative and qualitative views were considered through a survey questionnaire, an interview, and an assessment process conducted at Espiritu Santo Parochial School of Manila, Inc. and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Philippines. They were selected through convenience-quota and purposive sampling based on the subjects’ basic knowledge and appreciation of Philippine culture and heritage. The data were analyzed using frequency distribution and content analysis. Hake factor analysis was also used to measure the appraisal level in terms of art awareness and appreciation. The results revealed that the respondents grasped a high appraisal of the Philippine culture and arts. This implied progress factors in terms of art as a form of communication, museums as the priority tool for preservation and promotion, and the country’s identity and cultural history as to reframe art appreciation. On the contrary, they adapted more to the culture and arts of other countries than to cultural roots due to factors that cause it to deteriorate such as foreign cultures and modern technologies adaptation, lack of knowledge and participation, and the primordialism of ethnocentrism. The researchers assessed that the theory exposed understanding emotions as it is evident that the respondents can reframe others with their beliefs and values towards Philippine culture and arts.

appraisal level , appraisal theory , deterioration , inclination state , Philippine arts , Philippine culture

USEFULNESS AND CHALLENGES OF CLUSTERED SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING MODULES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL DISTANCE LEARNING

Turkish online journal of distance education, https://doi.org/10.17718/tojde.1143460.

• Article Files
• Journal Home Page
• Volume: 8 Issue: 3
• Volume: 8 Issue: 4
• Volume: 9 Issue: 1
• Volume: 9 Issue: 2
• Volume: 9 Issue: 3

Main Navigation

• Contact NeurIPS
• Code of Ethics
• Code of Conduct
• Create Profile
• Journal To Conference Track
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Proceedings
• Future Meetings
• Exhibitor Information
• Privacy Policy

NeurIPS Creative AI Track: Ambiguity

Following last year’s incredible success, we are thrilled to announce the NeurIPS 2024 Creative AI track. We invite research papers and artworks that showcase innovative approaches of artificial intelligence and machine learning in art, design, and creativity. 

Focused on the theme of Ambiguity, this year’s track seeks to highlight the multifaceted and complex challenges brought forth by application of AI to both promote and challenge human creativity. We welcome submissions that: question the use of private and public data; consider new forms of authorship and ownership; challenge notions of ‘real’ and ‘non-real’, as well as human and machine agency; and provide a path forward for redefining and nurturing human creativity in this new age of generative computing. 

We particularly encourage works that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries to propose new forms of creativity and human experience. Submissions must present original work that has not been published or is not currently being reviewed elsewhere.

Important Dates:

• August 2: Submission Deadline
• September 26: Decision 
• October 30: Final Camera-Ready Submission 

Call for Papers and Artworks

Papers (posters).

We invite submissions for research papers that propose original ideas or novel uses of AI and ML for creativity. The topics of research papers are not restricted to the theme of ambiguity. Please note that this track will not be part of the NeurIPS conference proceedings. If you wish to publish in the NeurIPS proceedings please submit your paper directly to the main track.

To submit: We invite authors to submit their papers. We expect papers to be 2-6 pages without including references . The formatting instructions and templates will become available soon. The submission portal will open sometime in July.

We invite the submission of creative work that showcases innovative use of AI and ML. We highly encourage the authors to focus on the theme of Ambiguity.  We invite submissions in all areas of creativity including visual art, music, performing art, film, design, architecture, and more in the format of video recording .  

NeurIPS is a prestigious AI/ML conference that tens of thousands researchers from academia and industry attend every year. Selected works at the Creative AI track will be presented on large display screens at the conference and the authors will have the opportunity to interact with the NeurIPS research community to germinate more collaborative ideas.

To submit:  We invite authors to submit their original work. An artwork submission requires the following:

• Description of the work and the roles of AI and ML 
• Description on how the theme of Ambiguity is addressed
• Biography of all authors including relevant prior works 
• Thumbnail image of the work (<100MB)
• 3-min video preview of the work (<100MB) 

Single-blind review policy

The names of the authors should be included in the submission. 

Conference policy

If a work is accepted at least one author must purchase a  Conference & Tutorials  registration and attend in person . For pricing visit the pricing page . For registration  information visit the registration page . The location of the conference is Vancouver and the authors are responsible for their travel arrangements and expenses. The conference does not provide travel funding. 

For updates, please check this website regularly.

To stay up-to-date with all future announcements, please join our mailing list [email protected] .

For other inquiries, please contact [email protected] .

Jean Oh roBot Intelligence Group Carnegie Melon University

Marcelo Coelho Design Intelligence Lab MIT

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Can art be data, the case of art therapy for veterans with posttraumatic stress symptoms..

Posted May 30, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

• What Is PTSD?
• Find a therapist to heal from trauma
• For art to serve as data, it needs to be quantifiable and subject to empirical or experimental examination.
• By assessing the impact of art produced by people with PTSS during art therapy, we tested the therapy's value.
• Changes in the art made before and after therapy demonstrated the salutary effect of art therapy.

At an interdisciplinary conference, I heard a scholar from the humanities refer to art as data. What could that casual reference actually mean? Art serves many purposes. It can facilitate communication. It can promote social cohesion. It can express emotions. But how do any of these functions of art provide information that a scientist would consider data? Can art take quantitative form that could be used to make empirical comparisons and even to drive experiments that test hypotheses?

Testing a hypothesis

We recently published a paper ( Estrada Gonzalez et al., 2024 ) in which we show how art can in fact become data in a way that most scientists would accept. We tested our hypothesis using participants who were blinded to the relevant conditions and measured an important aspect of art that was subject to statistical analyses.

What was the problem and the hypothesis under consideration? Military personnel frequently experience distressing symptoms following psychological trauma . Posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are not treated easily, and conventional medical interventions have limited success. We are collaborating with the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in which an art therapy program is offered to military personnel to alleviate PTSS. In this program, veterans paint a self-portrait on a blank paper mâché mask at the beginning of their sessions and then again after they have completed the program. Because veterans with PTSS often have trouble expressing their emotional state in words, their paintings provide an alternate way to express their affective state. Once these emotions are externalized in the masks, the artworks can be used further as a vehicle for talk therapy. Using their art, we wished to formally test the hypothesis that art therapy has a salutary effect on people with PTSS. To do so, we needed to quantitatively measure what emotions are expressed in these masks and if that expression changes with therapy.

The impact of art

In a different line of research, we identified cognitive and emotional impacts that art can have on a viewer (Christensen et al., 2023). Using expert input and then crowdsourcing semantic associations, we identified a taxonomy that characterizes aesthetic experiences. Analogous to the way a sommelier might offer a vocabulary with which one can appreciate a complex sensory experience like wine tasting, we propose that a vocabulary that identifies different flavors of an aesthetic experience can help characterize and enrich that experience. We identified 69 potential cognitive and emotional impacts of art. We organized this semantic network into 11 dimensions of aesthetic experience, which could be further reduced at a coarse level into four categories of experience: engagements characterized by (1) positive affect, (2) negative affect, (3) an attentive/immersive state, and/or (4) new understanding (epistemic transformation).

Our taxonomy gives us a measure with which to quantify an important aspect of any art—its expressive qualities and potential impact on viewers. With this measurement tool in hand, we turned to the masks made by veterans before and after their therapy. Using 10 masks, five made before therapy and five after, we crowd-sourced them to assess the impacts that could be appreciated in these images. The participants in this study were blinded to which masks were made before and which masks were made after treatment. The 11 dimensions of the taxonomy were used to assess the viewers’ emotional read of the masks and to test for any differences between the masks made before or after therapy.

The art in art therapy

We found that viewers experienced the initial masks to be more angry, upset, and challenging than the later masks. While people with PTSS often describe themselves as feeling numb, they could express negative emotions in their masks. Similarly, viewers found the masks made at the final stage of therapy expressed more calm and pleasure than the masks made at the initial stage. These observations are consistent with the idea that the therapeutic intervention helped veterans to balance their emotions. Finally, participants exhibited a clear preference for the masks created during the later stages of therapy, rating them as more beautiful and expressing a greater liking for them compared to those from the initial stages. This preference appears to be linked to depth of engagement, as participants reported feeling more immersed in the viewing experience of the final-stage masks. These observations suggest that as therapy progressed, the masks not only served as a medium for emotional expression but also reflected the transformative power of art therapy and gained artistic value.

Using a novel measurement tool, our art impact taxonomy, we presented evidence supporting the hypothesis that art therapy has a salutary effect on the emotional state of people suffering from PTSS (Estrada Gonzalez et al., 2024). The emotional dimensions of self-portrait masks made before and after art therapy demonstrated that blinded participants were sensitive to the intervention’s impact. In this case, art was data—data that demonstrated the efficacy of art therapy.

Acknowledgment: The research cited was supported by the Henry Jackson Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Templeton Religion Trust.

Christensen, A. P., Cardillo, E. R., & Chatterjee, A. (2023). What kind of impacts can artwork have on viewers? Establishing a taxonomy for aesthetic impacts. British Journal of Psychology, 114 (2), 335–351. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12623

Estrada Gonzalez, V., Meletaki, V., Walker, M., Payano Sosa, J., Stamper, A., Srikanchana, R., King, J. L., Scott, K., Cardillo, E. R., Rhodes, C. S., Christensen, A. P., Darda, K. M., Workman, C. I., & Chatterjee, A. (2024, 2024/03/26). Art therapy masks reflect emotional changes in military personnel with PTSS. Scientific Reports, 14 (1), 7192. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-57128-5

Anjan Chatterjee, MD, FAAN, is Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

2024 Environmental Performance Index: A Surprise Top Ranking, Global Biodiversity Commitment Tested

The Baltic nation of Estonia is No. 1 in the 2024 rankings, while Denmark, one of the top ranked countries in the 2022 EPI dropped to 10 th place, highlighting the challenges of reducing emissions in hard-to-decarbonize industries. Meanwhile, “paper parks” are proving a global challenge to international biodiversity commitments.

  Listen to Article

In 2022, at the UN Biodiversity Conference, COP 15, in Montreal over 190 countries made what has been called “the biggest conservation commitment the world has ever seen.”  The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework called for the effective protection and management of 30% of the world’s terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine areas by the year 2030 — commonly known as the 30x30 target. While there has been progress toward reaching this ambitious goal of protecting 30% of land and seas on paper, just ahead of World Environment Day, the 2024 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) , an analysis by Yale researchers that provides a data-driven summary of the state of sustainability around the world, shows that in many cases such protections have failed to halt ecosystem loss or curtail environmentally destructive practices.

A new metric that assesses how well countries are protecting important ecosystems indicated that while nations have made progress in protecting land and seas, many of these areas are “paper parks” where commercial activities such as mining and trawling continue to occur — sometimes at a higher rate than in non-protected areas. The EPI analyses show that in 23 countries, more than 10% of the land protected is covered by croplands and buildings, and in 35 countries there is more fishing activity inside marine protected areas than outside. 

“Protected areas are failing to achieve their goals in different ways,” said Sebastián Block Munguía, a postdoctoral associate with the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) and the lead author of the report. “In Europe, destructive fishing is allowed inside marine protected areas, and a large fraction of the area protected in land is covered by croplands, not natural ecosystems. In many developing countries, even when destructive activities are not allowed in protected areas, shortages of funding and personnel make it difficult to enforce rules.”

The 2024 EPI, published by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network ranks 180 countries based on 58 performance indicators to track progress on mitigating climate change, promoting environmental health, and safeguarding ecosystem vitality. The data evaluates efforts by the nations to reach U.N. sustainability goals, the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, as well as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The data for the index underlying different indicators come from a variety of academic institutions and international organizations and cover different periods. Protected area coverage indicators are based on data from March 2024, while greenhouse emissions data are from 2022.

Estonia has decreased its GHG emissions by 59% compared to 1990. The energy sector will be the biggest contributor in reducing emissions in the coming years as we have an aim to produce 100% of our electricity consumption from renewables by 2030.”

The index found that many countries that were leading in sustainability goals have fallen behind or stalled, illustrating the challenges of reducing emissions in hard-to-decarbonize industries and resistant sectors such as agriculture. In several countries, recent drops in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) have been the result of external circumstances, not policy. For example, in Albania, supply chain disruptions led to more expensive animal feed that resulted in a sharp reduction in cows and, consequentially, nitrous oxide and methane emissions.

Estonia leads this year’s rankings with a 40% drop in GHG emissions over the last decade, largely attributed to replacing dirty oil shale power plants with cleaner energy sources. The country is drafting a proposal to achieve by 2040 a CO2 neutral energy sector and a CO2 neutral public transport network in bigger cities.

“Estonia has decreased its GHG emissions by 59% compared to 1990. The energy sector will be the biggest contributor in reducing emissions in the coming years as we have an aim to produce 100% of our electricity consumption from renewables by 2030,” said Kristi Klaas, Estonia’s vice-minister for Green Transition. Klaas discussed some of the policies that led to the country's success as well as ongoing challenges, such as reducing emissions in the agriculture sector, at a webinar hosted by YCELP on June 3.  Dr. Abdullah Ali Abdullah Al-Amri, chairman of the Environment Authority of Oman, also joined the webinar to discuss efforts aimed at protecting the county's multiple ecosystems with rare biodiversity and endangered species, such as the Arabian oryx, and subspecies, such as the Arabian leopard. 

Subscribe to “YSE 3”

Biweekly, we highlight three news and research stories about the work we’re doing at Yale School of the Environment.

 Denmark, the top ranked country in the 2022 EPI dropped to 10th place, as its pace of decarbonization slowed, highlighting that those early gains from implementing “low-hanging-fruit policies, such as switching to electricity generation from coal to natural gas and expanding renewable power generation are themselves insufficient,” the index notes. Emissions in the world’s largest economies such as the U.S. (which is ranked 34th) are falling too slowly or still rising — such as in China, Russia, and India, which is ranked 176th.

Over the last decade only five countries — Estonia, Finland, Greece, Timor-Leste, and the United Kingdom — have cut their GHG emissions over the last decade at the rate needed to reach net zero by 2050. Vietnam and other developing countries in Southeast and Southern Asia — such as Pakistan, Laos, Myanmar, and Bangladesh — are ranked the lowest, indicating the urgency of international cooperation to help provide a path for struggling nations to achieve sustainability.

“The 2024 Environmental Performance Index highlights a range of critical sustainability challenges from climate change to biodiversity loss and beyond — and reveals trends suggesting that countries across the world need to redouble their efforts to protect critical ecosystems and the vitality of our planet,” said Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy and director of YCELP.

• Daniel C. Esty
• Sebastián Block Munguía
• Ecosystem Management and Conservation
• Environmental Policy Analysis

Media Contact

Fran Silverman

Associate Director of Communications

Research in the News

Climate Change Threatens Resilience of Sri Lankan Rainforests

An Inside Look at Beech Leaf Disease

Achieving Sustainable Urban Growth on a Global Scale

Connect with us.

• Request Information
• Register for Events

Microsoft Research Blog

Microsoft at facct 2024: advancing responsible ai research and practice.

Published June 5, 2024

Share this page

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Reddit
• Subscribe to our RSS feed

The integration of AI and other computational technologies is becoming increasingly common in high-stakes sectors such as finance, healthcare, and government, where their capacity to influence critical decisions is growing. While these systems offer numerous benefits, they also introduce risks, such as entrenching systemic biases and reducing accountability. The ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FaccT 2024) tackles these issues, bringing together experts from a wide range of disciplines who are committed to the responsible development of computational systems.

Microsoft is proud to return as a sponsor of ACM FAccT 2024, underscoring our commitment to supporting research on responsible AI. We’re pleased to share that members of our team have taken on key roles in organizing the event, contributing to the program committee and serving as a program co-chair. Additionally, seven papers by Microsoft researchers and their collaborators have been accepted to the program, with “Akal badi ya bias: An exploratory study of gender bias in Hindi language technology,” receiving an award for Best Paper. 

Collectively, these research projects emphasize the need for AI technologies that reflect the Microsoft Responsible AI principles of accountability, inclusiveness, reliability and safety, fairness, transparency, and privacy and security. They underscore the importance of addressing potential risks and harms associated with deployment and usage. This post highlights these advances.

Microsoft Research Podcast

Collaborators: Holoportation™ communication technology with Spencer Fowers and Kwame Darko

Spencer Fowers and Kwame Darko break down how the technology behind Holoportation and the telecommunication device being built around it brings patients and doctors together when being in the same room isn’t an easy option and discuss the potential impact of the work.

Paper highlights

A framework for exploring the consequences of ai-mediated enterprise knowledge access and identifying risks to workers.

Anna Gausen, Bhaskar Mitra , Siân Lindley

Recent AI developments, especially LLMs, are significantly impacting organizational knowledge access and reshaping workplaces. These AI systems pose risks due to their interaction with organizational power dynamics. This paper introduces the Consequence-Mechanism-Risk framework to help identify worker risks, categorizing them into issues related to value, power, and wellbeing. The framework aims to help practitioners mitigate these risks and apply it to other technologies, enabling better protection for workers.

A structured regression approach for evaluating model performance across intersectional subgroups

Christine Herlihy, Kimberly Truong, Alex Chouldechova , Miro Dudík

Disaggregated evaluation is a process used in AI fairness assessment that measures AI system performance across different subgroups. These subgroups are defined by a mix of demographic or other sensitive attributes. However, the sample size for intersectional subgroups is often very small, leading to their exclusion from analysis. This work introduces a structured regression approach for more reliable system performance estimates in these subgroups. Tested on two publicly available datasets and several variants of semi-synthetic data, this method not only yielded more accurate results but also helped to identify key factors driving performance differences. 

Akal badi ya bias: An exploratory study of gender bias in Hindi language technology

Best Paper Award

Rishav Hada, Safiya Husain, Varun Gumma, Harshita Diddee, Aditya Yadavalli, Agrima Seth , Nidhi Kulkarni, Ujwal Gadiraju, Aditya Vashistha , Vivek Seshadri , Kalika Bali

Existing research on gender bias in language technologies primarily focuses on English, often overlooking non-English languages. This paper introduces the first comprehensive study on gender bias in Hindi, the third most spoken language globally. Employing diverse techniques and field studies, the authors expose the limitations in current methodologies and emphasize the need for more context-specific and community-centered research. The findings deepen the understanding of gender bias in language technologies in Hindi and lay the groundwork for expanded research into other Indic languages.

“I’m not sure, but…”: Examining the impact of large language models’ uncertainty expression on user reliance and trust

Sunnie S. Y. Kim, Q. Vera Liao , Mihaela Vorvoreanu , Stephanie Ballard, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan

LLMs can produce convincing yet incorrect responses, potentially misleading users who rely on them for accuracy. To mitigate this issue, there have been recommendations for LLMs to communicate uncertainty in their responses. In a large-scale study on how users perceive and act on LLMs’ expressions of uncertainty, participants were asked medical questions. The authors found that first-person uncertainty expressions (e.g., “I’m not sure, but…”) decreased participants’ confidence in the system and their tendency to agree with the system’s answers, while increasing the accuracy of their own answers. In contrast, more general uncertainty expressions (e.g., “It’s unclear, but…”) were less effective. The findings stress the importance of more thorough user testing before deploying LLMs.

Investigating and designing for trust in AI-powered code generation tools

Ruotong Wang, Ruijia Cheng, Denae Ford , Tom Zimmermann

As tools like GitHub Copilot gain popularity, understanding the trust software developers place in these applications becomes crucial for their adoption and responsible use. In a two-stage qualitative study, the authors interviewed 17 developers to understand the challenges they face in building trust in AI code-generation tools. Challenges identified include setting expectations, configuring tools, and validating suggestions. The authors also explore several design concepts to help developers establish appropriate trust and provide design recommendations for AI-powered code-generation tools.

Less discriminatory algorithms

Emily Black, Logan Koepke, Pauline Kim, Solon Barocas , Mingwei Hsu

In fields such as housing, employment, and credit, organizations using algorithmic systems should seek to use less discriminatory alternatives. Research in computer science has shown that for any prediction problem, multiple algorithms can deliver the same level of accuracy but differ in their impacts across demographic groups. This phenomenon, known as model multiplicity, suggests that developers might be able to find an equally performant yet potentially less discriminatory alternative.

Participation in the age of foundation models

Harini Suresh, Emily Tseng, Meg Young, Mary Gray , Emma Pierson, Karen Levy

The rise of foundation models in public services brings both potential benefits and risks, including reinforcing power imbalances and harming marginalized groups. This paper explores how participatory AI/ML methods, typically context-specific, can be adapted to these context-agnostic models to empower those most affected.

Conference organizers from Microsoft

Program co-chair.

Alexandra Olteanu  

Program Committee

Steph Ballard   Solon Barocas   Su Lin Blodgett * Kate Crawford   Shipi Dhanorkar   Amy Heger Jake Hofman * Emre Kiciman * Vera Liao * Daniela Massiceti   Bhaskar Mitra   Besmira Nushi * Alexandra Olteanu   Amifa Raj Emily Sheng   Jennifer Wortman Vaughan * Mihaela Vorvoreanu * Daricia Wilkinson *Area Chairs

Career opportunities

Microsoft welcomes talented individuals across various roles at Microsoft Research, Azure Research, and other departments. We are always pushing the boundaries of computer systems to improve the scale, efficiency, and security of all our offerings. You can review our open research-related positions here .

Related publications

A framework for exploring the consequences of ai-mediated enterprise knowledge access and identifying risks to workers, “i’m not sure, but…”: examining the impact of large language models’ uncertainty expression on user reliance and trust, akal badi ya bias: an exploratory study of gender bias in hindi language technology, investigating and designing for trust in ai-powered code generation tools, less discriminatory algorithms, continue reading.

Research Focus: Week of April 15, 2024

Research Focus: Week of April 1, 2024

Advancing transparency: Updates on responsible AI research

Advancing human-centered AI: Updates on responsible AI research

Research areas.

Related events

• Follow on Twitter
• Like on Facebook
• Follow on LinkedIn
• Subscribe on Youtube
• Follow on Instagram

Share this page: