The arts have been used in social work practice with individuals and communities since the beginning of the profession, and yet an articulation of a rationale for their use is missing. An exploration of how the arts fit within the profession’s mission is also lacking. The lack of a theoretical foundation for the arts in social work has thus resulted in the marginalization of arts practice in the field. This article examines fundamental questions regarding the use of the arts in social work: the relevance of the arts to clients, to social workers, and whether the arts can provide evidence to promote professional work. Addressing these concerns will clarify the relevance of the arts to social work theory and practice and explore their advantages and limitations, thus helping to create more nuanced collaborations between social work and the humanities, arts therapy, and the arts in general.

The connection between art therapy and specific theories of positive psychology such as Antonovsky’s theory of salutogenic sense of coherence (SOC) has been less articulated in the literature. This paper draws a methodological connection between art therapy and SOC, that is, meaning, manageability and comprehensibility, as the components of coping. This theoretical and methodological connection is then explored with a group of participants dealing with the health-stress of cancer. Method: We conducted a large-scale, qualitative study that included fifty transcribed hours of thematically analyzed arts processes and one hundred art works, used to explore salutogenic theory within a support group for recovering oncological patients. Results: The results point to the arts as including mechanisms that enhance meaning, manageability, and comprehensibility in an embodied and synergetic way. The art makes it possible both to separate and to ‘fill’ these three components, while on the other hand, integrating them into a cyclical element. We outline theoretical and methodological implications of understanding art therapy as a methodology to enact and concretize positive psychology theories, as well as presenting a protocol for using arts to enhance salutogenic coping in the context of health-related stress.

War poses a challenge for social workers, adding exposure to direct risk of personal harm to the general stress of social work practice. Artworks are frequently used in health care settings with people in high distress. This study had three goals: (1) to characterize the stressors of social workers living in a war zone, (2) to teach social workers in crisis situations to identify stress and resilience factors in their artworks, and (3) to develop a general self-care model for arts intervention for professionals in these situations. Common stressors experienced by participants were anxiety and fear as a result of bombs, sirens, worry over loved ones, and overexposure to media. These were layered onto professional stressors, including constant work communication on cell phones during war and dilemmas related to work-family conflicts. Allowing social workers to name and identity the sources of their stress and then change their artwork to enhance resilience helped them to gain a sense of control over diffuse sources of anxiety. The authors propose this method as an effective intervention model with social workers in high-stress situations.

This article discusses the advantages of arts-based research specifically for high-context, culturally diverse, power-infused, and chaotic or diffuse research settings as often found in international aid. It points to the ability of arts to concretize abstract concepts and to situate them within specific socio-cultural locations, enabling powerless groups to self-define and to adjust resilience-enhancing interventions to their own perceptions. The arts-based method as an indirect form of communication is shown to be effective in changing stands of power holders and experts, enabling a dialogue that creates culturally sustainable aid. The model used in this article is demonstrated and discussed.

This paper phenomenologically and qualitatively explores the relationship between humans and flowers as a relationship that throws light on the synergetic dynamics of embodied aesthetics. Its methods include qualitative description and thematic analyses of preferred flower types, as well as concept maps of the general term ‘flower’ by 120 students in Israel. The results revealed the interactive perceptual-compositional elements, as well as embodied, relational, and socially embedded elements of the aesthetic pleasure associated with flowers. Implications of this case study are generalized to understand the multiple and interactive components of embodied aesthetic experiences as a deep source of pleasure through interactive stimulation by and connection to the natural world.