Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary Practice

Music therapy to help treat patients with schizophrenia. Collaborative live art practices that transform feelings of dislocation among refugees. Media arts training to foster inclusive social participation among persons with disabilities. These are just a few examples of the creative arts in action across a range of disciplines, making a critical difference for individuals and society. In this collection of creative research in action, leading academics, health researchers, physicians, educators, environmentalists, and artists share first-hand accounts of how they’re using the creative arts in cutting-edge research and in methodologies for health, hope, and change. These compelling accounts demonstrate how the creative arts can cross disciplines and fields in search of solutions while creating new communities for change in the process.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Cheryl McLean

Part I: Creative Arts in Research and Action for Community Change
1. Community-based research, collaborating for change: Collaborating to tell stories of homelessness in Toronto, Izumi Sakamoto, Matthew Chin, and Cyndy Baskin
2. Voice of the artist as researcher, homelessness in Toronto: Writing toward homelessness, an artist/researcher's reflections, Nancy Viva Davis Halifax
3. Engaging neighbors, transforming toxic realities: Community environmental forum theatre using Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed to promote environmental justice, John Sullivan
From the Field — Photography and theatre in HIV Research: The caregiving network, Javier Mignone, Carla Pindera, Jennifer Davis, Paula Migliardi, and Carol D.H. Harvey
4. Our voice through pictures, mother and daughter: The story of a community-based Latina mother and daughter photovoice intervention, Carolyn Garcia and Sandi Lindgren
5. Health disparities in our community, reflections in art and performance: A community-based participatory approach with arts as a translational bridge to knowledge, Olga Idriss Davis

Part II: Performance in Health, Embodied Understandings
6. Revealed by fire: A woman's personal story of grief, dance, and transformation, Lata Pada
7. Ethnodramas about health and illness: Staging human vulnerability, fragility, and resiliency, Johnny Saldana
8. Performance-based approaches and moving toward kinaesthetic understandings of illness in healthcare, April Nunes Tucker and Amanda Price
9. Mining the depths: Performing stories of home and homelessness: How theatre can help create the space for deep listening and understanding, Ian Prinsloo, Jessie Negropontes, Sarada Eastham, Christine Walsh, and Gayle Rutherford

Part III: Creative Arts in Action and Practice, Special Populations: Self Expression, Identity, Community
10. Community media arts: Encouraging citizenship through creative self-expression, Lorna R. Boschman
11. Rapping from the inside out: Music therapy and "rap" music with an individual diagnosed with schizophrenia, Anthony DiGiacomo
From the Field — Music and songwriting for closure at end-of-life, Amy Clements-Cortes
12. An after school musical theatre programme: Community, hope, and transformation for a hard-of-hearing student, Theresa Webber, George Belliveau, and Graham W. Lea

Part IV: Narrative and Story
13. To be human with other humans: A caregiver's narrative, Susan K. MacRae
From the Field — Creative new directions in dietetics research and education: A voice for change, Catherine Morley
14. Mapping resiliency: Building bridges toward the future in dietetics: An experiential arts-based narrative inquiry with dietetics professionals, Jacqui Gingras and Jennifer Atkins
From the Field — Bringing what's on the inside out, Melany Cueva
15. Creating a place for the arts in healthcare management education, Sherry Fontaine
16. Honouring the patient's voice in health professional education, Seema Shah
From the Field — Digital storytelling in the classroom: Promoting engaged learning, Christine Walsh
17. Digital stories and experiential learning: Teaching medical students about patients as educators, Kim A. Bullock, Kathleen McNamara, and Donna Cameron
From the Field — Sharing the voices of our elders through digital story, Patti Fraser
18. My mother's body: An autoethnographical story: A story of grieving, remembering, and touch, John J. Guiney Yallop
19. Paying tribute to caregivers through story, performance, and installation: Arts-informed research as a path to hope and change, Ardra Cole and Maura McIntyre

Part V: Interdisciplinary Art Practice for Personal and Community Healing
20. Performing beauty, practicing home: Collaborative live art and the transformation of displacement, Devora Neumark