Full Description
The past two decades have witnessed a vigorous challenge to social work. A growing global convergence between the market and the public sector means that private sector values, priorities, and forms of work organization increasingly permeate social and community services. As challenges facing people and communities become more layered and complex, our means of responding become more time-bound and reductionist.
This book is premised on the belief in the revitalizing power of arts-informed approaches to social justice work; it affirms and invites creative responses to personal, community, and political struggles and aspirations. The projects described in the book address themes of colonization, displacement and forced migration, sexual violence, ableism, and vicarious trauma. Each chapter shows how art can facilitate transformation: by supporting processes of conscientization and enabling re-storying of selves and identities; by contributing to community and cultural healing, sustainability and resilience; by helping us understand and challenge oppressive social relations; and by deepening experiences, images, and practices of care.
Social Work Artfully: Beyond Borders and Boundaries emerges from collaboration between researchers, educators, and practitioners in Canada and South Africa. It offers examples of arts-informed interventions that are attentive to diversity, attuned to various forms of personal and communal expression, and cognizant of contemporary economic and political conditions.
Contents
Social Work Artfully: Beyond Borders and Boundaries, edited by Christina Sinding and Hazel Barnes
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction Christina Sinding and Hazel Barnes
1. Where we've been and what we are up against: Social welfare and social work in Canada Donna Baines
2. Where we've been and what we are up against: Social welfare and social work in South Africa Edwell Kaseke
3. How art works: Hopes, claims, and possibilities for social justice Christina Sinding and Hazel Barnes
Art for Conscientization and Re-Storying Selves
4. Art and storytelling with migrant children: Developing and thickening alternative storylines Edmarié Pretorius and Liebe Kellen
5. Art towards critical conscientization and social change during social work and human rights education, in the South African post-apartheid and post-colonial context Linda Harms Smith and Motlalepule Nathane-Taulela
6. When we are naked: An approach to cathartic experience and emotional autonomy within the post-apartheid South African landscape Khayelihle Dominique Gumede
Art for Community and Cultural Healing, Sustainability, and Resilience
7. Excavating and representing community-embedded trauma and resilience: Suitcases, car trips, and the architecture of hope Patti McGillicuddy and Edmarié Pretorius
8. Performing understanding: Investigating and expressing difference and trauma Hazel Barnes
9. Towards an Indigenous narrative inquiry: The importance of composite, artful representations Randy Jackson, Corena Debassige, Renée Masching, and Wanda Whitebird
Art for Transforming Social Relations
10. Emerging paradigms for managing conflicts through applied arts Kennedy C. Chinyowa
11. Corroding the comforts of social work knowing: Persons with intellectual disabilities claim the right of inspection over public photographic images Ann Fudge Schormans
Art for Transforming Social Care Practice
12. Bringing relating to the forefront: Using the art of improvisation to actively perceive relational processes in social work Cathy Paton
13. Making meaning of our experiences of bearing witness to suffering: Employing A/R/Tography to surface co-remembrance and (dwelling) place Patti McGillicuddy, Nadine Cross, Gail Mitchell, Nancy Davis Halifax, and Carolyn Plummer
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
