Artists draw on research for wellbeing

Increasingly recognised as a valid form of therapy in a clinical setting, the visual arts have for decades been acknowledged for their positive effect on wellbeing and mental health.

Research into and development of the practice has been ongoing since the mid-20th century when the benefits were first recognised in an official capacity.

More generally, however, the wellbeing benefits of visual arts have found a place in a broader educational setting.

In Perth, a recent research project has been exploring the way innovative teaching strategies can support the mental health of children and adolescents.

Three years of research – led by Telethon Kids Institute in partnership with Healthway and Edith Cowan University – has resulted in a framework known as Social and Emotional Wellbeing through the Arts (or SEW-Arts).

The framework will be put to the test during two separate immersive learning workshops jointly delivered by the partners, along with the Chamber of Arts and Culture WA and the Art Gallery or WA, and called the Teaching Artist Training Program.

At the first of the workshops, scheduled for May, 20 artists will partake in a hands-on course to equip them with tools needed to embed SEW-Arts strategies into their practice and pedagogies.

They will learn to build capacity in arts-led mental health support for young people, and invest in long-term wellbeing, social skills and emotional intelligence.

The artists will be paid to participate in the program.

Following the May training day, which will be held at AGWA, researchers at Telethon Kids Institute researchers will use feedback to refine the program for the second training day to be held later in the year.

AGWA head of learning and creativity research, Lilly Blue, is one of four professional creatives developing the training component.

Ms Blue said the participants were all artists with significant studio practice seeking to apply their artform to the context of education for young people.

“Often people think teaching artists are educators that teach art subjects in schools, and in many cases teaching artists do also work in school environments,” Ms Blue told Business News.

“The key difference here is that we’re wanting to support arts practitioners across disciplines who are interested in making their own practice accessible to children and young people, not in relation to school curriculum expectations.

“Through conversations with artists and arts organisations it became increasingly clear there were limited capacity building opportunities for teaching artists in WA.

“I also recognised there were other experienced practitioners who I wanted to collaborate with, which is why I reached out to Ron Bradfield Jnr, Libby Klysz and Jeremy Smith.”

Ms Blue said there were some difficult conversations about the best way to translate the SEW-Arts research into workshop activities for the Teaching Artist Training Program, particularly because it was ongoing.

“We’re looking at how you embed preventative mental health and wellbeing strategies in very high-quality arts experiences,” she said.

“We’re looking to build skills in how you work with an arts-led preventative approach, rather than a didactic or therapeutic approach.

“[T]he SEW-Arts framework offers a way of understanding … what we know about the ways the arts impact mental health and wellbeing.

“The SEW-Arts framework is still in development, and we are interrogating, testing, evaluating and working with it, and it’s a living thing that is not fixed or finite.

“It’s an interesting meeting place when you’re working with a research model that is scientific, didactic and statistical – which is of course necessary and offers something important – and then that meets creative practices that are intentionally poetic, nonlinear and open-ended.”

Healthway senior manager health promotion partnerships, Sue-Ellen Morphett, said the Teaching Artists Training Program connected the SEW-Arts research and empowered artists to appreciate their own practice and skills and ultimately trust in their ability to enhance wellbeing outcomes for young people.

“It’s one thing having the knowledge base, but what this training does is actually enable those teaching artists to develop their own skills and understanding,” Ms Morphett told Business News.

“They’re already doing a lot of this great work in their work as artists, but it’s actually raising awareness of how powerful what they’re doing is.

“We’re hoping this is just the beginning and that we’ll be able to replicate the training … at the end of this.

“If we can get our children and young people to develop life skills, enhance their emotional intelligence and really just set a good foundation for the development of their overall wellbeing, we would have achieved what we’re trying to do.”

The program received 89 applications for the 20 openings.

Ms Blue said the program and the SEW-Arts research were investments into the future of arts in the state.

“[W]e have so much research that tells us the arts have a significant impact, particularly in the preventative space, on young people’s mental health and wellbeing,” she said.

“If we know that, then it’s really important we support artists to be the best they possibly can be, so that we’re seeing the highest level of outcomes possible for children and young people.

“These outcomes are not always possible, or as high, when the arts are experienced only in school environments where there are often competing priorities and curriculum and testing expectations.”

Telethon Kids Institute senior research fellow Leanne Fried was involved with the curation of SEW-Arts. Her role within the Teaching Artists Training Program is to provide AGWA and the Chamber of Arts and Culture WA with an understanding of the research framework.

“It’s been commonly known that the arts help people to feel good about themselves, but it’s never really been known exactly how that works,” Ms Fried said.

“What the framework does is just help them to target particular things that have been well known to be psychological concepts that improve mental health.”