Healing

This chapter, per the author, is to convey the significance in facilitating healing through storytelling empowering individuals to reclaim and build sustainable lives for themselves. People will feel the force of passion and commitment in their stories as they reflect and become inspired to act. When we help identify a way to transfer hurt to healing, we move people to consider what they might become if they are “more” than the hurt—more determined, more prepared, more confident, and more empowered. The purpose of this chapter is to advocate the use of storytelling as an effective medium to embrace in the positive power, benefit, and effect that stories have in the healing cycle. Stories may appear to be simplistic yet are purposeful. However, developmental psychologists point out that stories are not innocent as they always have a message. These emotionalized messages have been told over centuries and yet the messages are often lost, unappreciated, and unheard in the clutter of assumptions, caveats, data, and the fear that the storyteller will not be taken seriously.

Community Music Therapy Partnering With Community Musicians

This chapter discusses the collaboration of community musicians and community music therapists working to create a community orchestral dialogues experience for youth patterned after a Middle Eastern model. The author explores the definitions of community musicians, music therapy and community music therapy, and how these definitions diverge and converge. The author explains and discusses Orchestral Dialogues: Accepting Self, Accepting Others and the learning that took place for the youth involved, as well as for the staff, both community musicians and community music therapists. The final section of the chapter provides lessons learned and implications for future collaborations for community musicians and community music therapists.

Collaborative Art and Relationships

This study supports the value of collaborative visual artmaking in the pursuit of strong relationships, healthy bonding, and the development of the whole child. Based on educational, artistic, and child development theory, this mixed-methods study utilized arts-based collaborative experiences to measure potential growth in the areas of bonding, attachment, and relationship development between child and caregiver pairs (dyads). Through informal art-making sessions, caregivers and their child experienced collaborative artmaking and rated their own personal view of their relationship and bond with their dyad partner in pre and post-assessment surveys, through interviews and storytelling, and through observation using a bonding assessment chart. It was found that collaborative artmaking does indeed have a positive effect on the deepening of relationships and supports an increase in positive family behaviors and dynamics.

Storytelling Through Dance and Movement

Everyone has a story to tell, but because of trauma, not everyone can use words to tell it. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate an arts-based, trauma-informed, hope-infused movement and storytelling curriculum for adults (ages 19+) who are in recovery from various addictions or traumatic experiences. The curriculum was implemented with a group of five people selected by the supervising agency (Kingdom Recovery) to assess whether or not it proved beneficial to the participants. Assessment methods included before/after class experiences, a movement assessment checklist, and an evaluation survey. The curriculum consisted of seven lessons lasting 90 minutes each, and the goal of the curriculum was to promote life-skill building, healing, and hope. At the end of the seven-week time period, subjects performed pieces they choreographed throughout the sessions as a celebration of their accomplishments and hard work. The goals of the curriculum were accomplished successfully and 100% of the participants noticed an increase in their confidence, empathy, and creativity.

Narratives of Writing as Healing

Writing as an art form helps people heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This chapter uses the theory of narrative inquiry to present a first-person case study of the author's writing life dovetailed with research illustrating how writing helps people heal. Writing methods will help educators, patients, people experiencing struggles, and anyone who wants to transfer thoughts to the page. Writing helps people cope with adversity, reframe situations to show a more optimistic attitude, and feel safe because the written page will not judge its author. Journal prompts serve as resources for the reader to begin or continue a writing practice.

Learning Together

This chapter describes a 17-year partnership between the James Madison University Art Education Center and the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community. The collaboration centers on a service-learning experience for pre-service art educators to provide art instruction to the residents of the retirement community. In 2009, the author became the coordinator of this service-learning experience and instructor for its corresponding art education course. The art education students work with independent living and memory care residents of the retirement community. Being a part of a collaborative, long-term program with the retirement community has provided tremendous learning experiences for the author, her students, the residents, and the retirement community staff regarding the power of art making in an intergenerational setting. This chapter includes a literature review, examples of artwork made in the program, descriptive observations, and reflections on the author's experience working with students and residents in the retirement community.

Butterfly, Emerging

The prevalence of traumas such as sexual violence is difficult to measure. However, it is fairly widely accepted that 1 in 5 women and 1 in 33 men will be a victim of sexual violence in her or his lifetime. Because of complicating factors to this type of trauma, survivors may not readily identify themselves as that. Healing arts and yoga help survivors to process traumatic energy and thoughts without having to delve into those dark and painful caverns. This chapter shares first person experience of sexual violence and navigating healing, as well as professional experience with other survivors, to illustrate the importance of trauma-informed healing and expressive arts when healing from trauma.

Healing Our Heroes

Societies rely on first responders to save lives. What happens when the wellbeing of these crisis workers is compromised by daily exposure to crisis and trauma? This chapter describes a developed and tested arts-based intervention aimed at mitigating the trauma response through positive resource reinforcement. Specifically designed to be used in a non-clinical setting, the intervention features the drawing of a mandala capturing images and symbols of safety and was tested to ascertain the efficacy of its ability to increase positive affect, decrease negative affect, and reinforce connections to positive resources in participants.

Music, the Arts, and Healing

The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate the ability to create opportunities to use the arts to heal. The author has included three narratives, both his personal story as a professional artist, a non-clinical practitioner, and those of his students. These narratives illustrate the effect of the arts on individuals dealing with trauma and poverty. Time and time again, as indicated in these narratives, the arts can be called on to provide respite and relief from fear, anxiety, and hurting. The arts are a touchstone that can be revisited throughout a lifespan regardless of age or stage or even circumstance.

Beyond Words

Post-traumatic growth is an intangible yet a very real and possible phenomenon. Conventional measurement of post-traumatic growth relies on formal self-assessed questionnaires and interviews which may be challenging to administer and sustain in the long course of the healing process. This chapter builds upon the post-traumatic growth inventory designed by authors Tedeschi and Calhoun and proposes an arts-based assessment for post-traumatic growth. This may offer a more organic approach to the measurement of growth and it may be utilized by caregivers and counselors in a safe, non-clinical environment. The results from this research demonstrate the effectiveness and depth of arts-based assessment both as a standalone as well as a complementary tool that can be used alongside other forms of assessment to measure growth.