Abstract
Social Work Artfully: Beyond Borders and Boundaries is an edited textbook that explores the use of art-based therapy in social work practice. The book takes on a macrolens to analyze the field of social work and make visible the ways art can bring about social change and revitalize the entire profession. According to the editors, Christina Sinding and Hazel Barnes, arts-based social work has the unique ability to engage clients in autoethnographic storytelling that allows for conscientization and the “re-storying of selves and identities” (p. 1). It also has the ability to engage entire communities in cultural healing and can help transform social relations and systems by giving them the power to identify what changes they would like to see in their community. The textbook is collaborative (representing numerous accounts from Canadian and South African scholars and social workers), disruptive (challenging Western thinking), and inspiring (prompting social workers to consider the use of art-based therapy).
Sinding and Barnes provide numerous examples throughout the book of ways in which art has successfully been used to heal and transform non-Western communities. In working with migrant children in South Africa, for example, authors Edmarié Pretorius and Liebe Kellen explain how the use of narrative therapy and creative art therapy can empower children to identify issues they’d like to work with and overcome. According to the authors, these forms of therapy create a safe space for children to think, feel, and propose change. What that “change” looks like literally reflects what the children visually depict with the use of their art.
Collages, clay sculptures, sock puppets, photography, and persona dolls were among the many art-based activities implemented by Pretorius and Kellen in their practice. Through the use of these tactile methods, many migrant children were able to achieve critical conscientization and confront “their own experiences of oppression and injustice” (p. 77). Additionally, by shifting the practitioner’s role from therapist to facilitator, a shift in therapeutic power occurred allowing both the child and the facilitator to spearhead change and deliver results. This shift in power is seen as revolutionary, and the authors suggest that it might be enough to reframe the way we think of social workers and revitalize the field of social work.
Proven to provide kinesthetic, perceptual, cognitive, and creative healing, these tactics were also used to work with indigenous communities who have experienced trauma in postapartheid and postcolonial South Africa. It was also used when designing antioppressive curricula for schools in the region.
Filled with numerous examples that can easily be applied to one’s work, Social Work Artfully: Beyond Borders and Boundaries is a good introduction to the concept of art in social work practice. Singing and Barnes have carefully organized an anthology of successful art-based therapy frameworks for those interested in exploring its application into their own work. Highlighting non-Western social work perspectives, this textbook is also for those interested in cross-cultural social work.