Facilitated arts engagement with women veterans for health and well-being

Abstract

To demonstrate the health and well-being benefits of facilitated arts engagement with women veterans, we draw on a key practice-based example from the Australian National Veterans Arts Museum (ANVAM), an organization with expertise in collaborative art-making with veterans. We outline ANVAM’s framework and the processes art therapists use to create facilitated art exhibitions. We discuss how veterans’ involvement with art-making has therapeutic benefits, can contribute new knowledge on health and well-being, and convey nuances of gender-specific experiences. We briefly outline the trend in evidence from academic literature on arts-health research with veterans and the sparse creative research with women veterans to highlight the potential of art-based methods in veteran health and well-being research, given growing numbers and the expanding roles of women in defence. Arts-health research using diverse methods has yielded promising results in this field. As such, interdisciplinary, co-designed, and strength-based art-based research with women veterans can add to knowledge co-creation on this topic.