Re:applications of creative arts therapy training

I find your observation of the differences between aboriginal children and white middle class children very interesting, and I would like to suggest a parallel with a certain kind of provincialism I sometimes notice in the field of art therapy. From what you described, it seems like the imagination of the aboriginal children was vast enough to overpower any territorial concerns on the piece of paper, whereas the city children's imagination was somewhat more limited, leaving them mostly with territorial concerns and little inspiration.
When successful inovation is presented to the field of art therapy, it is often met initially with resistance, and with questions like "How does it contribute to the field?" Rather than being inclusive, art therapists sometimes rejects approaches that utilize inovative approaches, materials, and art forms.
Whenever I am confronted with this kind of thinking, I am puzzled and disappointed by what I see as a fundamental lack of imagination. Cross-polination between fields is a central thesis of Shaun McNiff's ground breaking book, Art-Based Research (1998, Jessica Kingsley Publishers).
Besides, one thing I know from the therapeutic aspect of my own creative process is that we don't choose our medium, our medium chooses us. For a field to be anything other than inclusive of a new medium is overly controlling and pretentious.
Thank you Lindsay for your stories.
By the way, activity departments (often staffed by art therapists) were implemented in US prisons and jails, after deadly riots in the 1970s.
Martin Perdoux

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