This book integrates the fields of expressive arts and ecotherapy to present a nature based approach to expressive arts work. It highlights attitudes and practices in expressive arts that are particularly relevant to working with nature, including cultivating an aesthetic response to the earth and the relationship between beauty and sustainability.

Social Action Art Therapy in a Time of Crisis outlines theories and models of social action art therapy, identifies its application in times of crisis, and explores the ways in which art therapy can work effectively for individuals and groups experiencing crisis. Drawing upon various ecologies, climate psychology, and eco-art therapy, this book addresses various responses to climate change, including notions of belonging, the physicality of experience, and the role of imagination in creating alternative versions of the future. The author presents a social action approach to art therapy as a way of addressing the political and collective components of climate change as well as the individual and emotional components. To help explore what social action art therapy can offer in this time of crisis, the author illustrates examples that show how the ideas have been used in other moments of crisis, including asylum, refuge, and domestic abuse. This innovative book contributes to the development of contemporary art therapy practice and will be of interest to arts therapists, arts psychotherapists, expressive therapists, ecotherapists, ecopsychologists, arts-based researchers, and many more.

Nature-Based Play and Expressive Therapies addresses a wide range of healing modalities and case studies that can be used in both indoor and outdoor environments. Each chapter includes vignettes to support the interventions and approaches presented. Readers will find a diverse array of helpful handouts and topics explored, including tips for creating outdoor healing gardens and labyrinths, guidelines for using nature to address trauma, working with sandplay and storytelling in nature, adapting nature-based interventions via telehealth, and much more. Chapters focus on work with young children and teens in individual settings as well as work with families and groups, making this book an important read for a wide range of mental health professionals.

Environmental Arts Therapy: The Wild Frontiers of the Heart describes what happens when we take the creative arts therapies and the people whom we work with out of doors in order to provide safe, structured and accompanied creative therapeutic healing experiences. The theoretical themes are developed along with illustrated examples of clinical practice across a variety of settings and locations. The work is introduced and co-edited by a pioneer in the field, Ian Siddons Heginworth, who describes the emergence of environmental arts therapy and its growth across the British Isles supported through the training course based in London. The following 12 chapters are written by contributing authors and creative arts therapy practitioners working with children, adults and elders in schools, adult mental health and private practice in Britain and Europe. A central focus of the book is the clinical populations and settings in which clinicians work, and it also describes the health benefits as well as the challenges faced when working out of doors. This is a book about the emergence of a new creative therapy modality in the British Isles. It shows the value of working with the natural cycles and seasons, using an integrative arts approach including dramatic enactment, role-play, poetry, art-making with natural materials, storytelling, and the use of bodywork through movement, sound, rhythm and the voice, all held and reflected by our encounters with and in nature. It is about our relationship with nature, creativity and therapeutic healing and is written for trainers, trainees and practitioners in the creative arts, psychotherapy and ecotherapy.

Environmental Expressive Therapies contributes to the emerging phenomenon of eco-arts therapy by highlighting the work that international expressive arts therapists have accomplished to establish a framework for incorporating nature as a partner in creative/expressive arts therapy practices. Each of the contributors explores a particular specialization and outlines the implementation of multi-professional and multi-modal "earth-based" creative/expressive interventions that practitioners can use in their daily work with patients with various clinical needs. Different forms of creative/expressive practices—such as creative writing, play therapy techniques, visual arts, expressive music, dramatic performances, and their combinations with wilderness and animal-assisted therapy—are included in order to maximize the spectrum of treatment options. Environmental Expressive Therapies represents a variety of practical approaches and tools for therapists to use to achieve multiple treatment goals and promote sustainable lifestyles for individuals, families, and communities.

This book provides a practical and research-based exploration of virtual art psychotherapy, and how its innovations are breaking new ground in the mental health field. With seventeen chapters authored by leaders documenting their research on creative arts therapies online, along with findings from the Virtual Art Therapy Clinic, this volume presents examples, strategies, and experiences delivering arts-based therapeutic services and online education. Clinical practice examples support and provide evidence for the transition from in-person to virtual sessions. By combining the collected expertise of all the contributing authors, this book encourages art therapists to support further growth in the field of virtual art therapy.

This book shows how art therapists can use found objects in their work with clients. Found objects can be a highly affordable, imaginative and creative way of working, and are particularly effective when working with marginalised populations and clients who have experienced trauma. This edited collection contains chapters from a wide variety of contributors from around the world and covers a vast array of topics, including the use of found objects in clinical settings, community and art practice, pedagogy and self-care. This is the ideal resource for any art therapist wishing to explore the use of this non-traditional medium to enrich their practice.

The Handbook of Art Therapy has become the standard introductory text into the theory and practice of art therapy in a variety of settings. The comprehensive book concentrates on the work of art therapists and the way that art and therapy can combine in a treatment setting to promote insight and change. In this fourth edition, readers will gain both a historical overview of art therapy and insight into contemporary settings in which art therapists work, with a new chapter on the use of new technology and working online. The authors are highly experienced in the teaching, supervision and clinical practice of art therapy. Using first-hand accounts from therapists and patients, they look particularly at the role of the art work in the art process and setting in which it takes place. Chapters explore the theoretical background from which art therapy has developed and the implications for practice including the influence of art and psychoanalysis, creativity, aesthetics and symbolism, and the impact of different schools of psychoanalytic theory. Also featured is an extensive bibliography, encompassing a comprehensive coverage of the current literature on art therapy and related subjects. Covering basic theory and practice for clinicians and students at all levels of training, this book remains a key text for art therapists, counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and students at all levels, as well as professionals working in other arts therapies.

This book lays the foundation for a fresh interpretation of art-making and the therapeutic process by re-examining the concept of poiesis. The authors clarify the methodology and theory of practice with a focus on intermodal therapy, crystallization theory and polyaesthetics, and give guidance on the didactics of acquiring practical skills.

This book emphasises ecological, nature-assisted expressive and creative arts and art therapies within the context of the current ecological crises. Rich in fresh theoretical perspectives, this timely compendium of theory, research, and practice also provides methods and tools that can help the reader understand and incorporate new eco perspectives into their work. Building on the concept of poiesis as the human creative function, this book seeks to stress the importance of humanity's ecopoietic capacity, creating a more sustainable life for humans. It has been specifically created within the context of this most critical period of human existence, and acts as a forum for innovation based on the values of the environmental movement and its desire to address the extensive sociopsychological impact of the ecological crisis.