We are delighted to announce the latest publication from the Arts for the Blues team, in the Journal of Applied Arts and Health.
The abstract of the piece, entitled ‘Dancing the Blues: An interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and therapists’, is as follows:
Creative practice differs widely across the contexts of artistic performance and therapy. In this article the authors describe a novel example of how the otherwise separate fields of choreographic practices and dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) have fed into each other. More specifically, the article outlines (1) how research into the effectiveness of DMP for depression has been used to create an interdisciplinary performance and (2) how the creative process has informed the development of therapeutic work. The performance was originally intended to disseminate quantitative findings from a study in DMP, but, as it developed, the resonances between artistic and therapeutic practice became the key focus and led to the artists contributing to the principles of a new creative therapy. The performance toured internationally and the new therapy model ‘Arts for the Blues’ has been piloted in the NHS, charities and schools in the north-west of England.
The article represented a return to the very early origins of the Arts for the Blues project when it was still known as Dancing the Blues and describes a process of interdisciplinary practice across arts and therapy that has driven the project ever since.
You can find the article here (subscription required).
You can visit the original Dancing the Blues website here.