Occupational Therapy and Arts Therapies
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/7189
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Item An inquiry into the relationship between the visual arts and psychotherapy in post revolutionary Cuba(Queen Margaret University College, 2006-03) Hills de Zárate, MargaretThis thesis focuses on the relationship between the visual arts and psychotherapy in post Revolutionary Cuba. The material on which it is based was collected over a fourteen month period and three visits to Cuba between April 1999 and August 2001. The study opens with the presentation of two brief histories, that of Cuban Art and Art Education and that of Cuban Mental Health Care. In this context the Revolution is taken as a useful reference point in terms of thinking about change and historical developments in both fields. Naturalistic Inquiry and Grounded Theory respectively were used to collect and analyse the data presented. These approaches allowed the researcher the degree of flexibility necessary to undertake research in a potentially delicate situation full of unknowns and to be able to modify and develop the course of inquiry as new evidence emerged. The main descriptive themes emerging from an analysis of the data pertain to the relationship between artists and mental health care professionals. These are (1) therapeutic work undertaken by artists, (2) artists working collaboratively with mental health professionals and (3) psychologists working with art as a therapy. The story which emerges pertains to a series of largely unrecorded histories spanning a forty year period. It begins with the work of Antonia Eiriz, who emerges as a key figure in the early development of art as a therapy and concludes with the work of the psychologist, Aurora García Morey, who takes centre stage in its continued development. This snapshot of Cuban art therapy is specific and unique and demonstrates the development of a very particular Cuban practice. However an analysis of the analytic themes which emerge from the data suggests that certain concepts such as responsiveness and pragmatism resound within a wider picture. These themes are discussed in chapters 7 and 8 with reference to the wider international context and specifically to the development of the profession in the United Kingdom. In my conclusions I suggest that these themes may be applicable to other areas of research and practice outwith and beyond Cuba and that while the concept of art therapy cannot be narrowly defined when it is applied to understanding practices in other, social, economic and cultural contexts, there are common factors which can be identified.Item An interpretive description of the patterns of practice of arts therapists working with older people who have Dementia in the UK(Queen Margaret University, 2009) Burns, JaneIn recent years there has been growing interest in arts therapy work with older people who have dementia. This has happened despite a paucity of UK research and writing on the aims of practice. Furthermore, there is little knowledge about the professional background of practitioners, the client group, care settings, theories and methods underpinning their work. This qualitative mapping study employs a methodology from nursing called interpretive description (Thorne et al. 2004). Interpretive description advocates a pluralistic approach for understanding the complex dialogue between clinical and research knowledge. The research design involved thirty-one semi-structured interviews with arts therapists from art therapy, music therapy, dramatherapy and dance movement therapy, participant observations of thirteen care settings and formal and informal interviews with ten medical/care staff who work with the arts therapists. The descriptive map was analysed using template analysis (King, 1998) and was interpreted using an integrative interpretive analysis (Heidegger, 1927; Smith et al.1999) The findings suggest that many arts therapists are pioneers in terms of being the first from their profession to work in the care setting. Issues around the arts therapists being unheard and staying unheard relate to their newness within these established settings. In terms of therapy work, theory and practice were being adapted in order to accommodate the temporal nature of the work. Despite distinctions in the art form, the study found that there is reciprocity of experience in terms of the arts therapists' feelings about the work and some in-session practices. These united the disciplines beyond the norms of mainstream practice.Item Community-based creative dance for adolescents and their feelings of social wellbeing(Queen Margaret University, 2009) Oliver, SueThe thesis contextualises creative dance as art in a community setting. The participants were teenage members of a community-run creative dance company. The aim was to explore any links young people make between their creative dance experience in a community class and their feelings of social well-being. The literature gives a brief historical overview of dance as a performing art and of the nature of aesthetics and creativity. It considers the art of dance as a form of communication, and the conditions for creativity to flourish. It looks at Bourdieu‘s (2005) theory of ‗habitus‘ and ‗field‘ in understanding the social experience which the dancers derived through creative dance. Consideration is given to theories and accounts of adolescent development and how community interaction can affect the dancers‘ feelings of social wellbeing. The methodological approach is hermeneutic phenomenology, with influences from ethnomethodology and social constructionism. The ontological principle is that personal meaning is socially constructed. Epistemologically the study is informed by the belief that knowledge is generated through the creative dance experience. The main data collection method was semi-structured interviews with the dancers (n=10), supported by observation of dance classes (n=7; filmed: n=4), group discussions (n=3) and graffiti walls (n=8, completed by the dancers). The data were organised and analysed thematically using a method of presentation inspired by Bourdieu‘s concept of a ‗social trajectory‘ - a lifetime journey of social encounters – offering headings under which the data were loosely organised. Selected observations are presented on DVD. The responses suggested a dance ‗journey‘ from preparation to performance, which allowed further organisation of data. The emergent themes included the dancers‘ motivation for dancing, their feelings about the creative process, experiences of social interaction and of taking control of one‘s own identity, through all the stages of experimenting with movement, refining the dances and performing. The main findings are: the dancers attached importance to company membership because it offered a means to clarifying self-identity through physical and artistic endeavour; the creative dance context gave them freedom to explore their movement capabilities and to interact socially, and thus gave them a means of negotiating their ‗habitus‘, i.e. adopting and adjusting social norms and values on their own terms. Performing was a celebration of achievement and confirmation of identity as a dancer. The study contributes to the understanding of how adolescents make sense of their identity in their social context through their creative dance experience and how that influences their feelings of social wellbeing.