Arts-Based Research, Resilience and Well-Being Across the Lifespan

This book investigates how arts-based research methods can positively influence people's resilience and well-being, particularly in constraining environments. Using examples from arts-based research methods in different contexts and from across the globe, the book brings together a diverse range of perspectives to understand how both resilience and well-being can be supported in a world that is rarely stress free.

Collectively they demonstrate how arts-based research methods can: provide agency through the foregrounding of participants' voices; afford transformational learning opportunities; create opportunities for relationship building; support creativity and new ways of thinking; generate aspirations and hope; encourage forms of communication that expose ideas, emotions and feelings that previously might not have been known or known how to be expressed; and enhance reflection and reflexivity. The authors explore how art-based practices, such as clowning, collage, dramatisation, drawing, painting, role-play and sculpting, can be used to support the resilience and well-being of individuals and groups across the lifespan, and theorize how arts-based research methods can positively contribute to participants' positive self-esteem, self-image and ability to cope with challenges and new circumstances. Academics, professional learning facilitators, higher education students, and anyone interested in resilience and well-being in the health and education sectors will find this an interesting and engaging text.

Loraine McKay is a senior lecturer in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Australia. Her work involves capacity building to promote resilience, agency and efficacy within preservice and beginning teachers’ professional identity. She is interested in exploring the role of arts in reflective practice within teacher education.
Georgina Barton is an associate professor in the School of Teacher Education and Early Childhood at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. She researches in the areas of the arts and literacy with diverse communities. She is a co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Global Arts Education with Margaret Baguley.
Susanne Garvis is a professor at the University of Gothenburg, and a guest professor at Stockholm University, Sweden. She researches in the field of early childhood education. She has been involved in national and international research projects, provided consultancy to government agencies and NGOs and developed expert reports for various agencies around the delivery of early childhood education.
Viviana Sappa is a senior researcher and teachers’ educator at Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET) in Lugano, Switzerland. She has substantial experience in research in education and VET and in teacher education with a focus on teachers’ resilience, identity development and transitions in the life span. Viviana is an adjunct member of Griffith Institute of Educational Research (GIER) at Griffith University.