Abstract
The social work profession has adopted science and empirical evidence as the means of validating discovery. As the commitment to science has intensified, interest in the use of arts in practice has grown as a counterpoise and an effort to justify other forms of knowledge and human experience. A roundtable was held in summer 2017 to examine whether the arts have a distinctive place in social work practice. It has been acknowledged that the arts have played a role in the history of the profession, however, remained neglected and marginalized in social work education. Roundtable participants argued that creativity, necessary disruption, and transformation have been lost to the field as a result. It is possible that social work education might be reimagined with new underpinnings of science, social innovation, and the arts. It should not be assumed that outcome measurement is not possible; however, measures would have to be rethought.
The arts have been associated with healing and the human experience for thousands of years. As an enduring aspect of emotion and social expression, it is no surprise that music, painting, sculpture, theater, film, design, and dance appear frequently in connection with social work practice. In one example, now famous in social work history, Jane Addams and her colleagues introduced sculpture, painting, and fine architecture among other forms of expression as methods of working with immigrants and introducing them to new expressive norms. Today, the arts are employed by human service organizations and in university classrooms to convey interpretations of social injustice, treat mental illness, and address other problems of interest in our field.
Recent interest in the relationship between social work and the arts appears to have a direct connection to the growth of social work science. In the United States, the effort to ground social work in science has been especially strong, perhaps in part because of federal funding mechanisms that have encouraged research infrastructure development in our field. The expectation of empirical evidence as a basis for understanding the value of interventions is almost universally accepted as essential both in professional practice and in academia.
Perhaps, in reaction to this now deeply embedded scientific orientation, interest in the arts among social workers has surged as a counterbalance. Fresh debates have emerged about whether social work practice itself is an art, a science, or a combination of both (Bent-Goodley, 2015). Whether art in social work is an escape from science and a retreat to subjectivism or can be understood and reconceptualized within the scientific tradition is one of the major unanswered questions for our profession. However, whatever the resolution, there is no escaping the urgent need for a new look at the arts and their place in 21st-century social work theory, education, and practice. With growing professionalism in the arts and abandonment of “art for art’s sake” by some schools of thought, it is time to closely examine whether there is a conceptually grounded place for the arts in professional social work education.
There is little question that the arts speak to the human mind in ways which differ from cognitive understanding and can influence both perceptions and behavior. Depending on form, arts are more immediately emotionally accessible and universal than other forms of human communication. This leads to the question why arts have not been more systematically incorporated into social work education and practice—at least as systematically as science. It is the purpose of this series of papers to begin a dialogue on this subject.
Since 2010, the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work has sponsored a series of intimate roundtables at the Islandwood Center, a 255-acre retreat on Bainbridge Island in the Puget Sound near Seattle. The objective of these roundtables has been to explore the most fundamental aspects of social work thought and consider possibilities for the 21st-century redefinition. To date, the topics of social work science, social innovation, social determinants of nursing, the future of the professoriate, the grand challenges idea in social work, and now, the arts in social work, have been addressed. Participants have been drawn from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States, with an interdisciplinary mix of academics and members of the higher education and practice communities. Perhaps the most impressive achievements have been formulation of the grand challenges initiative as the first project of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and a redefinition of social work science (Brekke & Anastas, 2019). Thus, this sheltered, small group setting has offered a unique experience to participants, who are invited not to find consensus but to contend, without preordained agendas or even calls to action. Roundtables of no more than 25 participants convene and reconvene for 3–5 years, depending upon the progression and depth of their ideas. The result is a unique venue for creativity and mutual challenge that exists nowhere else in our professional circles.
In the summer of 2017, 20 scholars gathered at Islandwood to consider the relationship of the arts to social work and whether there was a substantive body of theory, research, and experience upon which to build. Some members were a part of an arts incubator formed 2 years earlier at the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School, but others were selected from schools across the United States where the individual faculty had deep experience in this area. Additional perspectives were added by a philosopher of aesthetics from Princeton Theological Seminary, an accomplished scholar from Israel, and by the addition of practicing artists. A member of the Council on Social Work Education also attended, reflecting curiosity by professional organizations in this area. Six papers were presented, each with two discussants who were directed to provide expansion, counterpoints, and comments.
The first paper, by Professor Gordon Graham, was invited to present one viewpoint from modern philosophy on how art can be defined using the arguments of his discipline and then related, if possible, to social work. American social work has suffered from lack of philosophical development for many decades, and Professor Graham’s comments were expected to be challenging. He argued that while there was once a clear distinction between “proper art and design,” this separation is no longer clear as a result of changes that took place in the 20th century in both fields. With no agreement on what is “proper art” and abandonment of “art for art’s sake,” he wondered whether perhaps the use of aesthetics in design is similar to the use of art in art therapy. The lively interchange that followed has found home in another journal (Graham, 2018). The remaining Islandwood discussions are documented in this special issue.
In her article, “Art and the Social Work Profession: Shall E’er the Twain Meet?,” Professor Marilyn Flynn argues that in spite of consistent interest in the arts by social workers, there has been little formal development in the United States of a conceptual basis for use of the arts in the profession. She suggested that there are at least four different and distinguishable frameworks that might be used: art as an assistive tool for healing and therapy, art as a constructed outcome of interaction in individual therapy, art as a social investment to restore healthy communities, and art as a vehicle for reinforcing social norms, values, and political beliefs. She proposed a new vision for construction of the social work curriculum in which art would serve as one of three pillars together with science and social innovation.
Professor Shelley Cohen Konrad approached the topic from a different standpoint, asking whether the use of arts in social work might have drawbacks. She examined this question following years as an avid proponent. Her article highlights the ambivalence she has discovered in the profession about the value of the arts partly based on the problem of obtaining quantifiable outcomes. She contended that lack of a scientific base for integrating arts in practice was due to specific practices of privileging one type of evidence-gathering methodology and one way of organizing knowledge over others. The primary example, she maintained, was acceptance of methods associated with evidence-based practice as the sine qua non of knowledge development. Without dismissing the value of this approach, she argued that now more than ever, it was vital to employ the arts to disrupt the status quo that exists in the profession. Professor Konrad pleaded we must remain open to the role of arts to introduce novelty and transformation to the profession.
In the following paper, Laura Burney Nissen wonders, “What untapped possibilities exist in collaborations between social workers and artists?” From historical lens, she looks at the ways in which arts have appeared in social work advocacy and practice, and the barriers that prevented full adoption of the arts in practice with individuals and communities. She introduces examples of collaboration with the arts by other disciplines and the benefits that followed. Her main contention is that given the recent deepening engagement of professional artists in social change and community life, there is no justification for the social work profession to shy away from a much stronger collaboration. As examples of the positive outcomes that might be anticipated, she described the potential impact on progress in meeting the grand challenges for social work, enhancements to social work education, and empowerment of social work initiatives to resist social injustice.
A joint paper by Ephrat Huss and Michal Sela-Amit recognizes that while the arts have been incorporated into social work practice since the early days of the profession, there is still no articulated rationale for their use. This is an important factor in the marginalization of the arts as an aspect of professional practice. Their paper attempts to create such a rationale by examining three domains: the importance of the arts to clients, the value to social workers, and the significance in production of valuable data to enhance the profession. The authors outline advantages of a more nuanced collaboration between social workers and artists and with the arts community more generally.
Does the social work profession keep its fundamental commitment for shaping an infrastructure in research, education, and practice that focuses on environmental forces that impact on problems of living? Raphael Travis argues, “Not so!” He contends that this failure is a consequence of our inability to realize the power that could be achieved from integrating multiple forms of the arts into all levels of social work practice and research. In his article, “All Awareness and No Action,” Professor Travis outlines the factors that have held the field of social work back from understanding the value arts would confer in strategies for achieving individual and societal well-being.
Together, this cluster of papers calls attention to the ambivalence, marginalization, and neglect that characterize the engagement of social work professionals with the creative arts in recent decades. The authors highlight the needs of clients and professionals and the positive potential that engagement with the arts might hold for the profession and the society to which we are dedicated. At the same time, the discussions included here call for a more rigorously conceptualized and refined engagement and a better philosophical grounding than the one we have at present.
