Engaging Difficulties as Sources of Change and Creative Expression.

Creative energy is the basis of art healing. Difficulties are engaged as partners, and they generate life-enhancing expressions that transform the deepest and most complex problems. An emphasis on making and circulating creative energy, the movement basis of expression, rhythm, empathy, and creative change affirm the universal and empirical qualities that characterize the use of the arts in settings that range from psychotherapy to public health.

Anyone interested in exploring these ideas in more depth is encouraged to consider the Imagination in Action workshop the next day.

Shaun McNiff is author of Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go; Art Heals; Art as Medicine; Integrating the Arts in Therapy: History, Theory, and Practice; Art-Based Research; Art as Research and other books. An exhibiting painter who has had a seminal influence on the areas of creativity enhancement, the arts and healing, and art-based research, he has lectured and taught throughout the world. McNiff has received various honors and awards for his work including the Honorary Life Member Award of the American Art Therapy Association. He established the first expressive arts therapy graduate training program at Lesley University from which the field of expressive arts therapy emerged and in 2002 Lesley appointed him as its first University Professor.