Main description:

This book explores how 'the hostile environment' of neoliberalism affects art therapy in Britain. It shows how ambiguity in art and in psychoanalytically understood relationships can enable art psychotherapy groups to engage with class dynamics and aspire to democracy.

The book argues that art therapy needs to become a political practice if it is to resist collusion with a system that marginalises collectivity and holds individuals responsible for both their suffering and their recovery. It provides accounts of the contradictions that are thrown up by neoliberalism in art therapists' workplaces as well as accounts of art therapy groups with those affected by the fire at Grenfell Tower, in an acute ward, a women's prison, a community art studio and in a refugee camp.

Written by art psychotherapists for arts therapists and other mental health workers, the book will bring political awareness and consideration of resistance into all art therapy relationships, whatever the context and client group.

Contents:

Part 1. Resisting Capture; 1. The Hostile Environment, Sally Skaife and Jon Martyn; 2. Caught in Contradiction, Sally Skaife and Jon Martyn; 3. Art Therapy as Resistance, Sally Skaife and Jon Martyn; Part 2. Grenfell; 4. Latimer Community Art Therapy: Developing from the Grassroots after Grenfell, Susan Rudnik; 5. 'This is Our Group': Art Therapy with Adolescents in the Shadow of Grenfell, Beulah Lambert; 6. Don't go out that door: The pressure on a school to perform/conform whilst its community faces the aftermath of a disaster, Holly Caldecourt; Part 3. Against All Odds; 7. A place of safety or a hostile environment?: How enactment in an art psychotherapy group revealed impacts of immigration controls on the mental health of asylum seekers and migrants detained in a psychiatric unit, Annamaria Cavaliero; 8. Prison Cells: Transgenerational trauma and art psychotherapy groups with women in prison, Jessica Collier; 9. Protested Space: Artworks made in a therapeutic art studio under threat from cuts, Helen Omand; 10. Witnessing the Edge: Reflections on Co-Facilitating a Men's Art Therapy Group in a Refugee Camp in Greece, Emily Hollingsbee and Katie Miller; Epilogue: Politics in Action, Sally Skaife and Jon Martyn