Community Art Making: A Brief Summary

Van Lith utilized a longitudinal, multiple case study approach to her evidence based research into how art making is used as a recovery tool for change and coping with adults diagnosed with various serious and chronic mental health illnesses. Participants of the research were selected from two participating rehabilitation facilities and was comprised of both men and women ages twenty to late fifties; whom had participated in community arts based therapy services for various lengths of time and all had different levels of artistic abilities and interests in art making. Van Lith conducted a series of three one and a half hour-long interviews at six-month intervals with each of the twelve participants over the course of one year. In the interviews, she had the participants use an assessment tool, discuss the art they created in the previous six months at their art therapy programs through symbolic meaning making and discuss their overall art making experiences. From such interviews, an interpretative phenomenological thematic analysis was created and then validated and verified by each participant once over the course of the study
The similarity of mindfulness was attached to this theme as the research noted how many immersed them selves into the art making that it took on meditative properties in which either all thought focused on the art making process or there was unconscious expressions of self that may have otherwise been difficult to express in verbal psychotherapy. Psychological safe spaces were another theme noted in the research data. Art making allowed many participants to go to a place where they felt safe from their symptoms, allowed for the expression of thoughts in a safe and healthy manner to be processed. Art making also allowed for participants to create an image of a safe place that they could visually see and mentally go to and feel a part