Social Work and the Visual Imagination: Seeing with the Mind*s Eye

Images are inscribed in the memory more easily than words, and some remain with the viewer for a lifetime. Combining hindsight, insight and foresight, the chapters in this book turn a spotlight onto various aspects of health, social work and socially engaged arts practice. The visual imagination is evoked in this book to help practitioners see beneath the surface of contentious and problematic issues facing human services today. Risk assessment, child sexual abuse, work-life balance, old age, dementia, substance misuse, recovery, sex work, homelessness, isolation, biography, death and dying, grief, loss, vulnerability, care, and the function of the museum as a preserver of memory, all come under the sustained gaze and examination of the contributors. Grounded in the arts and humanities, the visual sense as a gateway to empathy is explored throughout these chapters. References are included to visual art, curating dramatic performance, poetry, film, dance, photography, diary entries, and public exhibitions. In an age when people increasingly compose their lives by staring into various screens, this book celebrates the visual modality that can humanise services with ‘human-seeings’.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work Practice.

Lynn Froggett is Professor of Psychosocial Welfare at the University of Central Lancashire where she is Co-Director of the Institute for Citizenship, Society and Change. Her professional background is in social work and her research interests include the socially engaged arts in health, welfare, communities and other settings. She is Chair of the Association for Psychosocial Studies.

Julian Manley FRSA researches at the University of Central Lancashire. He is Vice-Chair of the Gordon Lawrence Foundation and on the Executive Committee of the Climate Psychology Alliance.

Martin Smith is an Out of Hours Approved Mental Health Professional. He has researched social workers’ experiences of and responses to stress and fear. He is particularly interested in ways in which the Arts can challenge, inform and console in the aftermath of traumatic events experienced by social workers.

Alastair Roy is Professor of Social Research at the University of Central Lancashire and also a member of the Lancashire Institute for Citizenship Society and Change. He has a professional background in Youth and Community Work. His recent work has focused on the development of mobile and visual methods, developed through research which addresses social practice in the arts and community sectors.