Responding to the increased interest in the integration of expressive arts and ecotherapy, this book presents a nature based approach to expressive arts work. It provides an overview of the two fields, emphasizing how they can enrich and learn from each other, and highlights attitudes and practices in expressive arts that are particularly relevant to working with nature. This includes cultivating an aesthetic response to the earth, the relationship between beauty and sustainability, and lessons about art and nature from indigenous cultures. Four suggested structures for a nature based expressive arts activity - including writing, body, and ritual centered - are provided in the appendices.

What are the basic attitudes, values, and practices that are essential for effective work with the expressive arts? This book explores the answer to that question. The authors examine in depth the concepts of 'presence' - a way of 'being' - and 'process' - an open and trusting way of working - in the professional helping relationship and in the making of art. They introduce readers to the premise of the 'uniqueness of persons' that underpins these ideas, and look at how to realize them in practice. Diverse experiences are also shared of using the arts in group and individual work in a variety of settings, from team building and education to counseling, psychotherapy and supervision. This book is a comprehensive, foundational guide for all practitioners who use the expressive arts as a way of facilitating learning, growth, healing, and change, including expressive arts therapists and students, counsellors, coaches, and other helping professionals. With its clear structure and straight forward style, the book is appropriate also for beginners in these professional fields.

Poetry is increasingly used in therapy, and it already occupies a central place in expressive arts therapies. This book is the first to explicitly combine theory and practice from the field of expressive arts with poetry and poetics. The book offers both a guide and poetic encouragement for using poetry in expressive arts work. Within this arts context, poetry is offered as a way to create hope and confidence, providing clients with a platform for healing, reconciliation, problem solving, and personal and professional development. Each chapter uses examples of poetry to illustrate the ideas of the chapter. With an outstanding contribution to the field of expressive arts theory and practice, this book is essential for people wanting to use an integrative arts-based approach to help their clients build resilience and foster sustainable, positive change in their lives.

This collection reflects on the theory and application of expressive arts today in therapy, education, research and social and ecological change. Bringing the understanding of expressive arts into its contemporary theoretical framework, the book reveals the expansion of the field from its initial focus on therapy alone into a diverse range of other areas of interest to therapists, educators, researchers and those interested in working for social and ecological change. The book also contains a selection of discursive writing, poetry and visual art, highlighting the importance of keeping artistic creativity at the heart of the field. With contributions from pioneering arts therapists, this will be vital reading for arts therapists and students in the field today.

The field of expressive arts is closely tied to the work of therapeutic change. As well as being beneficial for the individual or small group, expressive arts therapy has the potential for a much wider impact, to inspire social action and bring about social change. The book's contributors explore the transformative power of the arts therapies in areas stricken by conflict, political unrest, poverty or natural disaster and discuss how and why expressive arts works. They look at the ways it can be used to engage community consciousness and improve social conditions whilst taking into account the issues that arise within different contexts and populations. Leading expressive arts therapy practitioners give inspiring accounts of their work, from using poetry as a tool in trauma intervention with Iraqi survivors of war and torture, to setting up storytelling workshops to aid the integration of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel. Offering visionary perspectives on the role of the arts in inspiring change at the community or social level, this is essential reading for students and practitioners of creative and expressive arts therapies, as well as psychotherapists, counsellors, artists and others working to effect social change.