Arts work: A typology of skills for arts-based group workers
Item
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Title
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Arts work: A typology of skills for arts-based group workers
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:1d5523945c52:10547
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identifier
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10748
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Creator
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Bitel, Mary C.,
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Contributor
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Harriet Goodman
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Social work | Psychology | Fine arts | arts therapies | expressive arts | group activity | group process | mutual aid | social group work
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Abstract
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The arts are utilized in groups across the applied humanities and social sciences with a wide range of populations to address a multitude of individual, group, and community needs. Despite literature suggesting challenges to the implementation of mutual aid based groups in social work, a body of empirical evidence exists on the use and benefits of the arts in working with groups across social science disciplines, including social work. In groups that utilize purposeful activity, balance of group process and task completion is integral to the development of the group as a system of mutual aid.;Through interviews with a sample of expressive arts group practitioners, this study sought to identify the skills expressive artists used and to determine whether those skills had a significant impact on group dynamics. This study explored expressive artists' rationale for the intervention skills they used. It also explored whether their work with groups suggested additional skills beyond those articulated in the social work literature to promote group dynamics including development of a system in mutual aid and the balance of group process and creative task completion. The researcher developed a performance-based typology of skills in response to how expressive artists described the skills and tools they used in activity-based group work. This typology reflected a focus on performance-rooted traits, facilitative skills, and interventions that resembled aspects of the interactional or mutual aid approach to group work but moved beyond that model to address the unique aspect of creative arts in groups.;The typology of skills presented in this study suggest an expanded and highly engaged role for the worker; it supports a fluid, cyclical quality in the use of skills and interventions that moves beyond the approach provided in traditional models of social group work. Most significantly, it suggests that arts-based group worker's primary and essential task lies in the consistent balance of group process and creative task completion. Engagement around both process and task promote the transmission of voice to group members, a significant aspect of this study that has implications for anti-oppression work across the field of social work.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Social Welfare
