Public Relations: Art Therapy Pedagogy Out of Bounds (Relations publiques : la pédagogie de l’art-thérapie hors limites)

Abstract

Art therapy pedagogy associated with the Art Hives network at Concordia University (Montréal, Quebec) and cultural practicums at Ulster University (Belfast, Northern Ireland) share in common a movement to develop learning studios that encourage public relations—unscripted relational encounters with activists, artists, allied professionals, and social practitioners that inform art therapy practice. The curriculum is composed through collaborations, with the art therapy educator becoming the curator of an educational assemblage that is beyond the boundaries of the university itself. This is pedagogy as civic practice, where knowledge parameters of the art therapy profession are transgressed and moved, as a choreography that extends beyond boundaries of habitual learning. This article encourages art therapy educators to devise multicentered learning studios (in public places) that support personal and social concerns. In this context art therapy education is constructed as a counterpoint to academic introversion. The proposal here is to mobilize art therapy education as an activist-informed reciprocation of ideas, actions, and resources.