Using Art for Social Transformation: International Perspective for Social Workers, Community Workers and Art Therapists

Social arts are manifold and are initiated by multiple actors, spaces, and direction from many directions and intentions, but generally they aim to generate personal, familial, group, community or general social transformation which can maintain and enhance personal and community resilience, communication, negotiation, and transitions, as well as help with community building and rehabilitation, civic engagement, social inclusion, and cohesion. Occurring via community empowerment, institutions, arts in health, inter-ethnic conflict, and frames of lobbying for social change, social art can transform and disrupt power relations and hegemonic narratives, destigmatize marginalized groups, and humanize society through creating empathy for the other.

This book provides a broad range of all of the above, with multiple international examples of projects (photo-voice, community theater, crafts groups for empowerment, creative place-making, arts in institutions, and arts-based participatory research) that is initiated by social practitioners and by artists – and in collaboration between the two. The aim of this book is to help to illustrate, explore, and demystify this interdisciplinary area of practice.

With methods and theoretical orientation as the focus of each chapter, the book can be used both in academic settings and for training social and art practitioners, as well as for social practitioners and artists in the field.

Eltje Bos (PhD) is Professor Emerita of Cultural and Social Dynamics ‎at the University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam. Also trained as a drama teacher, she focused and focuses in her work on the use of arts and creativity in social work as well as on strategies of collaboration to increase personal empowerment and ‎livability in the city.

Ephrat Huss (PhD) is Professor of Social Work and Art Therapy at Ben-Gurion ‎University of the Negev. She heads an innovative MA social work specialization ‎that integrates arts in social practice and has 40 students doing social arts ‎projects per year. She has a background in fine arts. Her areas of research ‎are the interface between arts and social practice and arts-based research: using arts ‎as a way of accessing the voices of marginalized populations. ‎