Art and Social Work: History and Collaborative Possibilities for Interdisciplinary Synergy

Abstract

This article will stretch the boundaries of the interdisciplinary lens to consider the history of and current potential for the arts to enhance, advance, and amplify individual, family, and community social change goals of the social work profession. To begin, consider the following questions: What would inspire artists and social workers to intentionally work together to reveal new strengths, energy, and capacity in the areas we care about? What do the arts have to teach the profession of social work and vice versa? How have the arts already played a role in the profession, and what has impaired social work’s ability to make greater use of the strengths associated with the arts? How have other professions (public health, psychology, education, and others) incorporated partnerships with the arts? This article concludes with a call to action to advance the potential of the arts in coordination with social work and related disciplines.

Keywords

art social work interdisciplinary collaborative

Over the last 20 years, interdisciplinary approaches to complex social problems have emerged as cutting edge in research, education, and practical application (Lattuca, Voight, & Fath, 2004; Newell, 2010). This article will stretch the boundaries of the interdisciplinary lens to consider the history of and current potential for the arts to enhance, advance, and amplify the goals of change for individuals, families, and communities of the social work profession. To begin, consider the following questions: What if artists and social workers worked together intentionally to reveal new strength, power, energy, and capacity in the areas we care about? What do the arts have to teach social work? How have the arts already played a role in the profession, and what has impaired social work’s ability to make better use of the strengths of artistic approaches? How have other professions incorporated partnerships with the arts, and what can social work learn from them?

Social work itself is a rapidly evolving profession, with its own distinctive approaches to social science and social change, as evidenced in the Social Work Grand Challenges initiative (http://aaswsw.org/grand-challenges-initiative/). Social work has been creative in working with individuals and communities to address social problems using innovative problem-solving and creative approaches (Heus & Pincus, 1986; Klau, 1981; Nissen, 1997; Weissman, 1990). However, creative we may be, there is only a small, though robust, vein of literature that has examined the ways in which the arts may play a role in social work history, practice, and education.

This article will do this through an exploration and juxtaposition of these issues and conclude with a call to increase the depth, breadth, and speed at which social work practice and research are expanding their capacity to incorporate interdisciplinary partnerships with the arts.

Art and Social Change

The arts carry and amplify voices. Historians and critics have described the extent to which the arts have encountered political shifts and divisions based on the times (Adams, 2005; Lampert, 2013; Rasmussen, 2012–2013). There are the fine arts, which express the voices of the elite within a society, the artists, and their patrons. There are also the outsider arts, practiced by those who do not adhere to, nor are beholden to, any norms of contemporary dominant culture, with varying levels of visibility and validity (most often either indulged or defined by the elite as well). In fact, many of the world’s most revered artists (as well as many of those not celebrated) have directly challenged existing boundaries, definitions, and norms. Equally important is the voice of the arts as they exist in the form of craft and Indigenous and/or cultural representations, reflecting everyday life in blends both creative and practical. It is a well-documented observation that in the spaces defined by these arts, they, as practiced by people through tradition, particularly by Indigenous peoples, are healing and protective (Archibald & Dewar, 2010). Recently, the concept of design thinking has been applied to a range of social challenges, inviting a merging of traditional problem-solving with design elements borrowed from the arts and engineering (Brown, 2009). Further, social movements have always had special relationships with the arts as tools for communication, to draw focus and excitement and to build meaning and solidarity, though many scholars have acknowledged that these aspects of movements are understudied (Adams, 2002; Dufour, 2002; Edelman, 1995; Eder, Staggenborg, & Sudderth, 1995; Eyerman & Jamison, 1991; Guetzkow, 2002).

Historians and social scholars concur that the arts bring value, meaning, identity, and strength to the cultures and/or communities in which they appear, regardless of whether this value is generated through the experiences of “individuals as audience members or direct involvement, the presence of arts organizations, and art/cultural districts, festivals or community arts” (Guetzkow, 2002, p. 1). However, the arts have also been under siege politically (see the vulnerability of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts) as well as economically, as neoliberal sensibilities increasingly encroach and art is valued primarily for its positive economic value and/or potential rather than its cultural power (B. Quinn, 2005).

With the intrinsic value of art also comes the power for individuals as well as communities, to define, envision, and express, if not create, their own worlds, as well as the power to be a tool for resistance to oppressive forces (Hocoy, 2005; Scher, 2007; Timm-Bottos, 2006; Tyson, 2003). It thus can also be assumed that the arts bring value, energy, and resources with the extraordinary potential to strengthen and multiply opportunities for positive change and liberation occurring at every level. This power might be in the making of art, sharing it to further some larger collective goal, or as one art historian suggests “open[ing] up an enacted, spoken, and lived space of individual narratives of collective importance, a mindscape that will eventually generate fresh hybrid signs and languages to meet the ever-changing world” (Fokidis, 2007, p. 66). In our contemporary world, the arts speak to issues around us that require something beyond a merely intellectual or scientific response, whether this is found in artistic expression in the Black Lives Matter movement (Miranda, 2016), in response to the AIDS epidemic (Hawkins, 1993), or in artistic resistance to negative stereotypes in marginalized neighborhoods in Philadelphia through the use of murals (Moss, 2010). The arts have appeared in scholarly literature examining the population-based relationship to the arts and aging (Cohen, 2006; Castora-Binkley, Noelker, Prohaska, & Satariano, 2010; Murray & Crummett, 2010) and mental health in vulnerable populations (Chung et al., 2009; Duncan & Stickley, 2007; Spandler, Secker, Kent, Hacking, & Shenton, 2007) to provide just a sample of what can be found in the exploration of the topic of the arts and social issues.

To begin an exploration of the explicit history of social work and the arts, one might consider the value and functionality of the power of these ideas and resources as they intersect with the practice of the profession of social work. How have the arts historically been important to social work and how can this history inspire/inform a future with a more robust expression of resources providing so much potential?

Social Work and Art: A Look Back

Early History: Hull House

It is a lesser known aspect of the development of Hull House that arts played a pivotal role in the work of Jane Addams and her colleagues. The arts were first thought by historians to merely enrich the lives of Hull House inhabitants, but this idea quickly evolved to the acknowledgment that people were not merely empty vessels waiting to become more cultured by the input of more powerful elites in their communities but rather were full of creative and artistic inclinations and productivity tied to their culture of origin and individual inclinations toward expression (Glowacki, 2004; Stankiewicz, 1989). Ellen Gates Starr, a cofounder of Hull House (along with Jane Addams), suggested that

without freedom and joy in work, people could not conceive or achieve art, and the objects of the modern age reflected that. The settlement, she concluded, must work toward the ‘rescue of those bound under the slavery of commerce and wage-law’ and must uphold the right of all to art and conditions of daily life that could feed the creative impulse. (Glowacki, 2004, p. 14)

Space for learning about, producing, and showing arts were all primary reference points in the early days of the social experiment of Hull House. History indicates that it was a successful and generative aspect of the success of the project. It is not clear exactly why its popularity waned. Some information suggests that this occurred after early leadership changed, and their successors were less inclined to acknowledge the arts as an intrinsic right, capacity, and vehicle for individual growth and pursuit of meaning (Glowacki, 2004). While it is odd to think that a simple shift in leadership could make such a change, what other factors that may have been at play remain a mystery.

More Recent History: Contemporary Social Work Literature

“The social worker as a performing artist, has the talent and will to move beyond the constraints of method and technique and respond imaginatively and creatively to the impromptu, unrehearsed nature of the special human relationship” (Goldstein, 1998, p 250, as cited in Gray, 2002, p. 413).

In his paper describing the late Howard Goldstein, Gray (2002) portrays him as a uniquely important voice for the 1970s and 1980s as a social work educator, theorist, and leader, deeply committed to the resurgence and protection of the idea of the social worker as an artist. He spoke to the possibility of the expansion of a social worker’s effectiveness to the degree that he or she or they were inclusive of the arts, humanities, and narrative aspects of the experience of working with others in the deeply personal and contextual ways that social workers do. This echoes the older voices of Addams and Starr, as noted above, and further resonates with Michael Fabricant’s warnings in the 1980s regarding the impending “industrialization of social work” (1985, p. 389), in which he describes early signs of what we would now refer to as neoliberalism or the neoliberal turn (Rossiter & Heron, 2011). This meant repressing social work as a creative endeavor and instead rendering it as a mechanical, heavily regulated, and “assembly-line” (Fabricant, 1985, p. 391) series of practices that inherently conflict with artful practice and contribute to what he described as a “debasement of craft” (Fabricant, 1985, p. 393).

Sindling, Warren, and Paton (2014) suggested that the literature pertaining to “arts-involved social work is variegated and lends itself to a wide range of clustering or categorizing approaches” (p. 187). They utilized an unusual and creative tool of analysis, identifying three metaphors that describe these clusters, for example, using the arts (1) to help social work clients “get stuff out” or to release troubling dimensions of experience and memory and seek relief from hiding or internalizing it (p. 190), (2) to help clients “inhabit others’ worlds,” safely exploring a range of alternative possibilities for life, history, thought, and beyond (p. 193), and/or to “break habits of seeing and knowing,” essentially to be shaken out of patterns of perception that are limiting or cause distress (p. 194).

In the 2000s, a modest but important series of explorations of social work in the arts continued (Chambon, 2009; Chamberlayne & Smith, 2009; Lee, 2008; Seligson, 2004; Tyson, 2003; Yee Lee, 2008), including von Wormer’s article on the importance of protecting “the social work imagination” (p. 21), which was, and remains, at risk of failing due to the enormity of stresses, ethical challenges, and continuing conflicts over what social work is and is not in the modern age. Walter (2003) suggested that social work has a tendency to drift away from creative expression or artistically anchored sensibilities, strategies, or expressions due to pressure to perform more as a science than an art. She encouraged social work to seek a “third space” (p. 317) between art and science that best suits our unique perspective. Similarly, Damianakis (2007) proposed that an “arts-infused approach calls for an enlarged view of human reality” (p. 525) goes beyond what science can offer and thus is essential to be incorporated. Yee Lee (2008) built upon this to suggest (utilizing emergent quantum and chaos theory) that people are “naturally creative and are made to create” (p. 19), an idea she asserted should cause us to continue to “create a context that fosters creativity in our clients and requires professionals to revisit our attitude toward the unpredictable, perspectives about change, and views of client-social worker relationships” (p. 19) within social work practice. Grassau (2009) suggested that the arts have particular value in revealing “relational and structural aspects of oppression” (p. 249) in community social work if carefully observed and unpacked. Travis and Deepak (2011) explored how emerging art forms, such as hip-hop, could be utilized in practice to empower young people. Nandan, London, and Bent-Goodley (2015) took the idea of creativity and the arts to the idea of social workers as social innovators and social entrepreneurs. Finally, in 2016, Kelly and Doherty (2016) and Lang (2016) both published explorations of nondeliberative practices in social work, asserting the importance, power, and potential of including the arts and music to facilitate “actional, nonverbal and analogic processes” (Lang, 2016, p. 97) as an alternative to the heavily structured and primarily cognitive-behavioral approaches favored in practice, which are not always effective and are sometimes limiting. These authors represent a sample of the small but robust literature on the topic of arts-based social work possibilities. Given these ringing endorsements, one might be troubled by the question why are such practices, possibilities, and dialogues not in greater circulation and practice in social work circles? Before moving on to other disciplines to explore arts inclusion, we will briefly explore mentions of arts inclusion in social work education.

The Arts and Social Work Education

Only a few explicit discussions of the ways in which the arts (or even creative thinking) are related to social work education could be found. Nissen (1997) produced a lengthy review of efforts to include creative thinking skills in social work education; for the most part, these suggest emphatic claims of need but few examples of success, and one study even suggested that notably creative people were systematically screened out of social work education (Heus, 1977). Eadie and Lymbery (2007) discussed the importance of balancing the technical aspects of professional education in social work with more creative aspects, further suggesting that the future of practice relies on the ability of social workers of the future to work creatively and adaptively in a changing world. Keddell (2011) suggested that using arts-based materials brings to life the idea of social construction (literally versions of reality coming into focus, as art is made in the social work classroom) and affords rich opportunities to explore, deconstruct, and grow based on the experience. Phillips and Bellinger (2010) made similar claims for the use of photography, which they assert is a particularly powerful medium for deep relationality and compassion. McPherson and Mazza (2014) initiated a global arts activism project called One Million Bones to educate students on global social problems such as genocide, which resulted in a great impact. Kirkendall and Krishen (2014) explored the concept of creativity in the social work classroom with a deep qualitative dive, inviting students to “define creativity, suggest methods to infuse it into the classroom, and apply it as practitioners” (p. 341). The study found that students were generally interested and willing to risk more creatively but that restrictions such as time, typical classroom arrangements, and increasingly prescribed assignment formats were inhibiting. Among the strongest recent work on the inclusion of the arts and social work education was a paper by Trevelan, Crath, and Chambon (2014), which strongly suggested that the arts were uniquely suited to meet contemporary challenges to social work educators, using pedagogical approaches to increase critical reflexivity, consider complex and intersectional dialogues, and explore social work practice canons and the politics of knowledge creation for a new age. They stated that this would be possible because of the nature of creative expression in its ability to be simultaneously practical and abstract, defined and yet inviting new perspectives and interpretations.

Why Does Social Work Not Engage With the Arts?

This brief overview of social work literature related to the arts in practice and education clearly suggests that social work does engage with the arts. There is a clear and steady line of social work scholars and practitioners who have valued, seen, and engaged with this topic from the very beginning of the profession, even if only in a humble way. The questions should not be why social work does not engage with the arts but rather “Why are the arts not viewed and utilized as a central set of resources and skills for social workers?” and “Why did the arts fall away from the central vision of what social work was about?” For in fact, while the literature on the arts in social work is meaningful, it is merely a fraction of what is produced on various other social problems and methods to address them. Proportionally, it is of very modest scale, and one might suggest it is displaced by more noisy, however important, topics related to our profession, following its long-standing dual quest to be taken seriously in terms of both professionalism and scientific credibility. Another interesting note from the preparation for this review is the relative balance of written work from within and beyond the United States. An unscientific finding is that countries like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom appear to more extensively legitimize the possibilities of the arts in social work practice; this could be a most interesting topic for a follow-up analysis.

Perspectives on Related Disciplines in Education, Public Health, Psychology/Art Therapy, Art and Social Practice, Urban Planning, and Research/Evaluation

Education

The arts and artistic expression are widely considered to be central to the process of receiving a meaningful education (Burnaford, 2007; Mishook & Kornhaber, 2006; Netzer & Rowe, 2010; Rinne, Gregory, Yarolinskya, & Hardiman, 2011). This is recognized in numerous veins of education literature showing (via a variety of loosely connected families of theory) that learning, discovery, connection-making, and the resultant transformational, generative, and creative thinking are accelerated and reinforced by arts-based methods in the classroom. Additionally, the arts have figured prominently in efforts to advance social justice education (Bell & Roberts, 2010; Campana, 2011; Clover, 2006; Dewhurst, 2011; Garber, 2005; Helguera, 2011; McGregor, 2012; T. Quinn, Ploof, & Hochtritt, 2012). A family of social justice education theorists and researchers have asserted that the arts hold a particular and powerful potential to advance the building of required empathy, humility, respect (for others), voice, community, and agency necessary for social justice progress. Some of this work relates to the building of particular types of creative resistance or “culture jamming” (Darts, 2004; Sandlin & Milam, 2008). Despite the great value of the arts in education and its relationship to clear gains in student outcomes (Darts, 2006; Karkou & Glassman, 2004), arts educators have also found themselves battling with increasing calls for education to be more outcome-driven and focused on fundamentals. Despite its gains and strengths, arts-based education has strained to keep a primary position in the contemporary education landscape, and though it has been maintained, this has not been without a struggle (Bequette & Bequette, 2012; Mishook & Kornhaber, 2006). Much of social work involves consideration of how to make education successful through engaging youth and adults in significant learning and meaning making and of how social justice education can be impactful throughout practice as well. Considering lessons and emerging research on the possible role of the arts in both areas provides extensive opportunity for partnership.

Public health

Public health is possessed of a long disciplinary recognition of the degree to which the arts are simply good for people, with a proven track record of helping them heal, connect with one another, learn about health issues, and address health challenges, whether personally or in the larger community context (Murray & Gray, 2008; Sonke, Rollins, Brandman, & Graham-Pole, 2009). Camic (2008) suggested that there is an innate connection between the arts and health and that the arts can play particularly powerful roles in “health promotion and prevention, illness management, clinical assessment and improvement of the health care system” (p. 287). While many authors have celebrated the value of arts-based tools for public health, much more research remains to be done to go beyond the few community evaluations of promising, early explorations of both physical and mental health (Bungay & Clift, 2010; Clift, 2012; Dooris, 2005; Macnaughton, White, & Stacy, 2005). Other authors have focused on the potential and promise of the arts and humanities to train health professionals to view their patients as whole, dynamic, and complex people (Frei, Alvarez, & Alexander, 2010; Sonke et al., 2009). In a work that incorporates study of urban planning, Semeza (2003) looked at the use of the arts to reenergize and boost community revitalization and gathering to protect/promote health and well-being. A few examples of public health intersectionality can be found in national standards for practicing both public health and art simultaneously, in Australia (C. Davies, Pescud, Anwar-McHenry, & Wright, 2016), England (Public Health England, 2016), the United States (State of the Field Report, 2009), Scotland (Scottish Arts Council, 2008), and the Indigenous peoples of Ottawa, Canada (Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2012). As health is a primary intersecting element of individual and family well-being, these resources indicate numerous opportunities for partnerships with social work.

Psychology/art therapy

This review will anchor an understanding of psychology-based interventions primarily through a look at the field of art therapy. Emerging out of the 1950s as a subspecialty of psychotherapeutic practice, art therapy sought to not only utilize but also discover the multiple and overlapping ways that the arts can improve human functioning (Borowsky Junge, 2010). While the majority of art therapy practice is focused on individual, family, and small group therapy (relevant to social work micro practice), this article will also specifically delineate the growing body of knowledge related to art therapy as an intervention tool for distress at the neighborhood, community, and other macrolevels, centrally grounded in social justice principles; this is perhaps the clearest bridge between art therapy and social work practices (Frostig, 2011; Hocoy, 2005; Kaplan, 2007; Potash & Ho, 2011). Frostig (2011) invites the consideration of praxis in the art therapy space and the concept of arts activism, defined as “a fluid engagement with an idea and a process that joins personal motivations with social concerns while maintaining political currency” (p. 50). Hocoy suggests a consideration of “personal psychological experiences and external societal structures as entwined in a co-creative, mutually dependent relationship” and that “art therapy and social action become interconnected enterprises having the same goal; just and peaceful communities derived from individual and collective wholeness” (p. 50). This flows from the unique role of the image and its power to connect to the narrative and simultaneously challenge prior truths as well as create new ones. This can be seen through examples such as art therapists in community mural making (Rosetto, 2012) as well as in creating new social organizations to creatively respond to social issues, for example, working with local youth to take discarded clothing and refashion it into new garments or building a thriving and vibrant art studio space that doubles as a positive youth center (Timm-Bottos, 2011).

In these resources, whether they impact individual healing and well-being or community evolution and empowerment, the subspecialty of art therapy provides a rich reservoir of tools and potential partnerships that could greatly enrich social work practice.

Arts/art and social practice

The fine arts world is not without its own perspective on the potential of art to be a positive and explicitly justice-centered transformational force in the world. For years, leaders in art history have been exploring the question of the social impact of the arts, a question that provokes philosophical, political, aesthetic, economic, and moral questions (to name a few), which all lead to the conclusion that the arts are among the most powerful vehicles known for the revelation of both truth and possibility (however, complex and multidimensional these may be) to civilization (Belfiore & Bennet, 2010). The preparation of young artists in academic spaces has begun to reflect a shift toward more socially engaged art, as well as international attention to artists such as Wu Wei, whose art frequently defies the notion of the beautiful to represent something a great deal more complex, with a socially charged presence (Hancox, 2012). Author and art critic Nato Thompson writes that

time and time again, I have seen the potent merger of art and activism transform people’s understanding of politics—and their relationship with the world around them. From the frontlines of the alt-globalization movement to Occupy Wall Street, art activism has made itself felt in grand and bracing ways. To my mind, these moments are proof that the role of culture must be taken seriously, and that deploying for the needs of social change can produce wondrous results. (p. vii)

He has created a sourcebook for socially engaged artists, filled with examples of art and social practice in recent history (Thompson, 2012), demonstrating a striking, creative, and vibrant array of meaningful, disruptive, and transformative artworks in social contexts. Cartiere and Zebracki (2016) focus specifically on the role of public art as a positive and social-justice-anchored tool to reorder unjust structures and spaces. A recent New York Times article has defined this new movement as “art and social practice,” reflecting the distinct desire for artists who are drawn to art have a practice that is more expansive, more engaged, and more meaningful than the classical tradition of art (Grant, 2016). With a broad, intersectional, and growing body of theory as well as increasing numbers of practitioners and thought leaders comprising its base, art and social practice explores communications, sociology, anthropology, political science, social justice, and peace studies, as well as community organizing in numerous art media/forms including photography, mural making, literature, garden building, theater, and more (Barndt, 2006; Helguera, 2011; Jelinek, 2013). This area of arts practice is especially robust in terms of its potential for partnership, due to the common value of meaningful social justice impact.

Urban planning

Urban planning has a long history of understanding and positioning the role of the arts as an expression of well-being, functionality, and success in well-planned and high-functioning urban spaces. The field has long recognized the role of such concepts as equity, access, cultural relevance, and gentrification to the challenges to healthy cities, and it has viewed the arts as a means to assure greater success in facing these issues (Belfiore, 2002; Cameron & Coaffe, 2005; Chappelle & Jackson, 2010). Many of the discussions in this sector focus on the tensions between commerce, public policy, livability, and equity (Markussen, 2011; Pollack & Paddison, 2010). Much of the view forward focuses on the economic vulnerabilities of the arts in city corridors due to economic pressure and how to best protect and enhance them as a recognized force for positive and generative urban life (Markusen, 2014; Sharp, Pollock, & Paddison, 2005). As so much of social work practice concerns a wide range of urban issues (especially intersecting with issues of urban poverty), partnerships with urban planners offer a range of rich opportunities for impact.

Art-based evaluation and research

Finally, an overview of the emerging use of the arts in social science research merits an inclusion in this article. There are at least two distinct branches of this work. First is the branch that seeks to pinpoint exactly what it is about the arts that works to improve individual and community lives (C. R. Davies, Kuiman, Wright, & Rosenberg, 2014; Galloway, 2009; Hamilton, Hinks, & Petticrew, 2003; Raw, Lewis, Russell, & Macnaughton, 2012). Researchers in this area have found that while much is known about the merits of arts inclusion, many of the specific nuances of their positive impact remain elusive and should be further studied to provide additional leverage in increasing their utilization across a wide range of health and human service sectors. The United Kingdom has advanced research in this area to such a degree that they recently produced an entire evaluation framework focused on arts for health and well-being (Public Health England, 2016). The second branch of research uses art-based methods as adjuncts or central tenets for research activity across the social sciences (Chilton & Leavy, 2014; Knowles & Cole, 2008; Leavy, 2015; McNiff, 2013; Walsh, Bickel & Leggo, 2015). The arts lend themselves to explore many of the complex questions in the contemporary social sciences due to their ability to do so many things at the same time: refresh perspectives, surprise, engage the emotions and intellect, cross-disciplinary boundaries, and express complexity (Chilton & Leavy, 2014). These methods, at their heart, build upon a tradition of qualitative inquiry guided by the tenets of inductive inquiry and eventually, examination of power relations in the research process (Leavy, 2015). As this is a relatively new body of methods, its challenges include the adjustment of the traditional presentation of research drawn from the arts in practice (Atkins, 2012; Boydell, Gladston, Volpe, Allemang, & Staslulis, 2012; Sinner, Leggo, Irwin, Gouzouasis, & Grauer, 2006) as well as gaining vital interdisciplinary footing that will allow research produced through arts-based methods to gain momentum and build its own base of credibility. It is simply an as-yet “junior” contributor to the social sciences and must continue to prove itself. As Eisner (2014) says, the idea that art can be regarded as a form of knowledge does not have a secure history in contemporary philosophical thought. The arts traditionally have been regarded as ornamental or emotional in character. Their connection to epistemological issues, at least in modern day, has not been a strong one. Are the arts merely ornamental or do they have a more significant role to play in enlarging human understanding? (p. 3).

In the ambitious and expansive volume Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research (Knowles & Cole, 2008), an article on social work in the arts by Chambon (2008, pp. 591–602) especially urges consideration of the arts to social work researchers, due to their congruence with the social justice goals of the profession. She suggests that the arts can assist in inviting and including story-based inquiry and handle the requisite intersectionality required of competent practice, and they challenge neoliberal constraints with their openness and resistance to any particular dominant narrative. It is clear that the arts and social science researchers are already in the process of creating a range of exciting and dynamic new tools, models, and frameworks to advance and expand the idea of knowledge, discovery, and research outcomes. Social work would only benefit by continuing to stay engaged and, where possible, lend its own unique voice to these emerging methods.

Interdisciplinarity—The Future Calls

To conclude, a review of the concept of interdisciplinarity is offered to underscore its relevance. A broad literature review on the subject, published in 2007, defines interdisciplinary research as that which brings different disciplines together to solve problems, building bridges between disciplines that allow exchange of knowledge as well as the creation of new knowledge that would not have been possible before the exchange and creative interplay of knowledge, language, and practice, leading to discovery, new opportunities, and potentially new disciplines that would not have been possible before (Aboela et al., 2007).

Based on this review, whatever barriers may have existed that inhibit the potentially powerful alliances between artists, social workers, and those of related disciplines pale in comparison to the opportunities such connections grant to advance our work in creative ways. A few specific ideas are offered

Call for arts and artists and social workers to amplify and intensify an analytical and critical understanding of the Grand Challenges in Social Work project.

Create intentional dialogue between federal, state, local, and tribal governments and arts organizations to identify common ground with social work goals to better collaborate in research and practice.

Invite arts and artists into social work education to better partner and enrich this educational process.

Invite arts and artists into efforts to resist and communicate during current political action focused on equity, justice, and social change events/dialogues.

Conclusion

There is more to learn. It will require leaps of faith, but it is worth it, given the possibilities and the clear indicators of value. We are not, fortunately, without markers and reference points to help guide the way, as has been indicated through this historical and disciplinary review of ideas, models, and frameworks.

In the end, the profession of social work comes from a deep need for social imagination, inspired by the classic concept of sociological imagination from past years (Mills, 2000), or more recently, critical social work imagination (Chambon, 2008). Our challenges are only to be met through the confluence of tradition and new ideas, however, potentially combustible, unpredictable, unwieldy, nonlinear, and surprising they may be. To do this, we must deny the belief that knowledge and truth are only available through linear and increasingly neoliberalized social work methods and spaces (Hyslop, 2011; Olssen & Peters, 2005; Rossiter & Heron, 2011). What new possibilities for equity, justice, healing, and transformation are just around the corner given a creative turn in our profession?

In the words of writer and poet Arundhati Roy, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” The arts, this article proposes, can hasten these discoveries, connections, and possibilities, and the time has come to recognize, value, and support partnerships and allow them to flourish across our professional boundaries. Social work, and all that we commit to across our various spheres and fields of practice, can only be strengthened and become more relevant, agile, nimble, and engaged as a result of such efforts.

For its conclusion, this article has a call to action: for a dedicated deepening of focus, discovery, and commitment, as well as for both interdisciplinary practice and scholarship to advance the potential of the arts, social work, and related disciplines as partnerships to enrich the world, as it seeks change, justice, and beauty.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article was prepared for the Islandwood Meeting on Social Work in the Arts, supported by the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California, held on Bainbridge Island, Washington, June 19–21, 2017.

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