Ephrat Huss
Prof. Ephrat Huss is a professor of social work at Ben- Gurion University of the Negev where she chairs an innovative MA in Art for Social Workers. She has researched and published extensively on arts-based research methods with marginalized groups, arts and sense of coherence, creative community and place-making through arts, and social and critical theories in art therapy. She is at present researching psychosocial interventions with refugees in Lesbos and editing a book on arts to transform society and on arts-based research in social practice:
Phone: 972-8-6428136
Address: Proff Ephrat Huss
Chair: Arts in Social Work MA specializaiton
Dept. of Social Work
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
P.O.B 653, Beer-Sheva 84105
Phone: 972-8-6428136
Address: Proff Ephrat Huss
Chair: Arts in Social Work MA specializaiton
Dept. of Social Work
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
P.O.B 653, Beer-Sheva 84105
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Books by Ephrat Huss
This book provides a broad range of all of the above, with multiple international examples of projects (photo-voice, community theatre, crafts groups for empowerment, creative place-making, arts in institutions, and arts-based participatory research) that is initiated by social practitioners and by artists - and in collaboration between the two. The aim of this book is to help to illustrate, explore and demystify this interdisciplinary area of practice. It provides a rich repository of social art initiatives The focus of each chapter is on its methods, and theoretical orientation, so as to help demystify social arts. The book is thus applicable academically and for training social and art practitioners, as well as for social practitioners and artists in the field
The literature has consistently documented the impact of the work on the
health and wellbeing of individual practitioners and the tensions they
experience when mediating organisational demands with the needs of
service users. Simultaneously, the quality and content of social work
supervision has become increasingly vulnerable to both local and global
systemic issues impacting on the profession. It is timely to explore
effective short-term, self-regulatory methods of support for
professionals. As a means of complementing and enriching their
supervision experiences and practice. We describe an arts-based
intervention in which five groups of social work professionals in England
(n = 30) were invited to explore guided imagery as a tool for reflecting
on a challenge or dilemma arising in their everyday practice. Evaluation
data was captured from the participants’ pre-workshop questionnaire,
visual analyses of the images generated and the social worker’s
narratives and post-workshop evaluation. We discuss the potential
application of using visual imagery as a tool to bridge gaps in
supervision practice and as a simple pedagogic tool for promoting
contemplative processes of learning. Visual imagery can be used to
strengthen social worker’s integration of different demands with their
emotional supports and coping strategies.
תקציר
הספרות על עבודה סוציאלית מדברת על החשיבות של הטיפול בדחק של עובדים סוציאליים ועל
הלחץ הרב הכרוך בעבודה הן מהמטופלים והן מהמערכות שהם עובדים בהן
לאור המחסור הגובר במערכות תמיכה כגון שעות הדרכה של עובדים סוציאליים חשוב
לייצר דרכים לטיפול- עצמי שהם מספקים מענה לצורך הזה ושמתמקדים בוודות עצמי ובמרחב
לחקור את התופעה אני מציעים התערבות באמנות למטרה זאת : המאמר מציג את התיאוריה של
שימוש באמנות להדרכה וההתערבות הוערכה לפני ואחרי ההתערבו
case studies focusing on a specific setting, theory, or
population, or on a more general overview. Although this
practice grounded fundamental approach is invaluable,
little attention has been given to theory and research. This
book provides a theory-based approach to research,
teaching, and practicing art therapy, discussing how the
different respective theoretical orientations of psychology
and social studies are interpreted and implemented by art
therapy.
This book draws on the latest research in the field and will
be a valuable text for art therapy theorists and researchers,
as well as practicing arts therapists.
Papers by Ephrat Huss
effect on the mood. During the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of ornamental plants increased, and many
turned to gardening, possibly as a way to cope with ubiquitous increases in negative mood following
lockdowns and social isolation. The nature of the special bond between humans and flowers requires
additional elucidation. To this means, we conducted a comprehensive online mixed methods study,
surveying 253 individuals (ages 18–83) from diverse ethnic backgrounds and continents, regarding
their thoughts and feelings towards photos of flowers, nature scenes and flower drawings. We found
that looking at pictures and drawings of flowers, as well as nature scenes induced positive emotions,
and participants reported a variety of positive responses to the images. More specifically, we found
associations of flowers with femininity, and connotations to particular flowers that were affected by
geographical location. While nature scene photos induced positive reactions, flower photos were
preferred, denying a mere substitution of nature by flowers and vice versa. Drawings of flowers
elicited less positive emotions than photos, as people related more to the art than to the flower itself.
Our study reveals the importance of ornamental flowers and nature in our life and well-being, and as
such their cultivation and promotion are essential
of the arts, as recently reported in a scoping review by the World Health
Organization. The creative arts in particular are acknowledged to be a public
health resource that can be beneficial for well-being and health. Within this
broad context, and as a subfield of participatory arts, the term social arts
(SA) specifically refers to an art made by socially engaged professionals (e.g.,
artists, creative arts therapists, social workers, etc.) with non-professionals
who determine together the content and the final art product (in theater,
visual arts, music, literature, etc.) with the aim to produce meaningful social
changes. SA can enhance individual, community, and public health in times of
sociopolitical instability and is an active field in Israel. However, SA is still an
under-investigated field of study worldwide that is hard to characterize, typify,
or evaluate. This paper presents a research protocol designed to examine a
tripartite empirically-based model of SA that will cover a wide range of SA
training programs, implementations, and impacts. The findings will help refine
the definition of SA and inform practitioners, trainers, and researchers, as well
as funding bodies and policymakers, on the content and impact of SA projects
in Israel and beyond
lesser form of art compared to so-called fine arts including poetry, architecture,
and sculpture (Parker & Pollock, 2013). Industrialization further reduced the
need for craftspeople. Even with the renewed interest in craft practices in Western
countries, crafts are often associated with working class people, often from
racial and ethnic minorities. Craft is not usually associated with creativity or with
social arts (Berger, 2005; Kaimal et al., 2017; Lippard, 1995; Timm-Bottos, 2011).
This marginalization of craft practices can also be found in art therapy discourses:
Psychodynamic and humanistic art therapy approaches tend to focus on the aim of
authentic individualized self-expression and on process rather than product (Huss,
2015; Kaimal et al., 2017; Rubin, 1999). When the field was first forming, art therapists
were at pains to be differentiated from occupational therapists, who used crafts
to work on motor skills. In more current art therapy theories, crafts have been conceptualized
as a calming, mindful activity that helps to self-regulate emotions and
improve mood, as in the case of drawing mandalas as a form of meditation. Crafts
have also been understood as a way to support problem solving, perseverance, and
other skills often lost in neurological impairment (Collier, 2011; Dalebroux et al.,
2008). Crafts are often not considered “creative” in terms of authentic self-expression,
therapeutic in terms of providing a way to reach the unconscious, or socially communicative
in terms of social art aiming to shift society.
Overall, the social context for impoverished single women and single mothers
points to intense difficulty in finding work alone, let alone in reaching professional
self-fulfilment. The statistics in the U.S. on single impoverished women’s
employment show that firstly, over eighty percent of those living in poverty
are women and only a third of these find adequately paid and protected jobs
by their late twenties. Additionally, around forty-two percent of at-risk young
women return to welfare support within four years of starting work. (Bynner
& Parsons 2001, 2002; Harris 1996. From this, then the interaction of gender
and poverty makes the odds of young impoverished women finding work at
all and self-fulfilment in work even smaller (Côté 1996; Cozareli & Wilkinson
2001; Zucker & Wiener 1993). Within this context, it is not surprising that the
focus tends to be on helping these young women find work without stopping
to explore how they define self-fulfilment, that is a concept reserved for middle-
class women. Indeed, the gap between this dire reality and the prevalent
media images of success for young women that magically manage to overcome
social disadvantages make the gap between reality and cultural images of selfactualisation
even harder to bridge (Harris 1996; Pavetti & Acs 1997; Vincent
& Osler 2003). This lack of real chance to ‘self-actualise’ through employment
as compared to middle-class women raises the question of if and how impoverished
young women do define success, or future dreams, or self-actualisation
for themselves (Brown 2001; Coiro 2001). Although these young women may
not have access to social symbolic and financial capital that enables self-fulfilment
through employment, they have the right to self-define goals, or visions
of self-fulfilment, that middle-class women take as their natural right: on this
level, then images of self-fulfilment can be a base to ‘dare to dream’, but also
a base for critical consciousness raising as to the reality and meaning
n.p.). This study highlights meanings of belly dancing in a multi-generational, inter-cultural
group of women citizens of the state of Israel. As discussed initially in Huss
and Haimovich (2011), 22 women, ages 25–60, participated in a 6-week series of
once-weekly, 90 min belly dancing sessions run by the Women’s Forum at Ben
Gurion University (BGU). This chapter revisits the original study to extend its “site
specific” personal-to-political analysis in dialogue with the growing body of literature
on belly dance’s global status as a mode of “empowerment” across genders
(Hobin, 2015; Sellers-Young, 2016a, 2016b).
BGU is located in Beer-Sheva, a small university town in the Negev Desert of
southern Israel with a largely Sephardic (Arab) and immigrant population. Like
most Israeli universities, BGU has a mostly female administrative staff and a predominantly
male academic profile (Hazan, 2008). Ashkenazi (European) students
outnumber Sephardic by about three to one (Meir, 2005). Approximately half of the
22 participants in the study were Jews of Ashkenazi origin while the rest were
Sephardic Jews and one Arab Muslim woman. Participants, most of whom were
mothers, presented a range of body sizes and levels of fitness.
In Israel, as elsewhere, belly dance is often practiced as a leisure dance form in
sports clubs and extra-curricular settings, with enough interest to support an annual
competition in Tel Aviv (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueZPtZLwMiI). Aligning
with historical and contemporary literature on the functions and effects of belly
dance for women, participants in the present study described experiences that move
beyond belly dance’s recreational and commercial value, touching on areas of
This book provides a broad range of all of the above, with multiple international examples of projects (photo-voice, community theatre, crafts groups for empowerment, creative place-making, arts in institutions, and arts-based participatory research) that is initiated by social practitioners and by artists - and in collaboration between the two. The aim of this book is to help to illustrate, explore and demystify this interdisciplinary area of practice. It provides a rich repository of social art initiatives The focus of each chapter is on its methods, and theoretical orientation, so as to help demystify social arts. The book is thus applicable academically and for training social and art practitioners, as well as for social practitioners and artists in the field
The literature has consistently documented the impact of the work on the
health and wellbeing of individual practitioners and the tensions they
experience when mediating organisational demands with the needs of
service users. Simultaneously, the quality and content of social work
supervision has become increasingly vulnerable to both local and global
systemic issues impacting on the profession. It is timely to explore
effective short-term, self-regulatory methods of support for
professionals. As a means of complementing and enriching their
supervision experiences and practice. We describe an arts-based
intervention in which five groups of social work professionals in England
(n = 30) were invited to explore guided imagery as a tool for reflecting
on a challenge or dilemma arising in their everyday practice. Evaluation
data was captured from the participants’ pre-workshop questionnaire,
visual analyses of the images generated and the social worker’s
narratives and post-workshop evaluation. We discuss the potential
application of using visual imagery as a tool to bridge gaps in
supervision practice and as a simple pedagogic tool for promoting
contemplative processes of learning. Visual imagery can be used to
strengthen social worker’s integration of different demands with their
emotional supports and coping strategies.
תקציר
הספרות על עבודה סוציאלית מדברת על החשיבות של הטיפול בדחק של עובדים סוציאליים ועל
הלחץ הרב הכרוך בעבודה הן מהמטופלים והן מהמערכות שהם עובדים בהן
לאור המחסור הגובר במערכות תמיכה כגון שעות הדרכה של עובדים סוציאליים חשוב
לייצר דרכים לטיפול- עצמי שהם מספקים מענה לצורך הזה ושמתמקדים בוודות עצמי ובמרחב
לחקור את התופעה אני מציעים התערבות באמנות למטרה זאת : המאמר מציג את התיאוריה של
שימוש באמנות להדרכה וההתערבות הוערכה לפני ואחרי ההתערבו
case studies focusing on a specific setting, theory, or
population, or on a more general overview. Although this
practice grounded fundamental approach is invaluable,
little attention has been given to theory and research. This
book provides a theory-based approach to research,
teaching, and practicing art therapy, discussing how the
different respective theoretical orientations of psychology
and social studies are interpreted and implemented by art
therapy.
This book draws on the latest research in the field and will
be a valuable text for art therapy theorists and researchers,
as well as practicing arts therapists.
effect on the mood. During the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of ornamental plants increased, and many
turned to gardening, possibly as a way to cope with ubiquitous increases in negative mood following
lockdowns and social isolation. The nature of the special bond between humans and flowers requires
additional elucidation. To this means, we conducted a comprehensive online mixed methods study,
surveying 253 individuals (ages 18–83) from diverse ethnic backgrounds and continents, regarding
their thoughts and feelings towards photos of flowers, nature scenes and flower drawings. We found
that looking at pictures and drawings of flowers, as well as nature scenes induced positive emotions,
and participants reported a variety of positive responses to the images. More specifically, we found
associations of flowers with femininity, and connotations to particular flowers that were affected by
geographical location. While nature scene photos induced positive reactions, flower photos were
preferred, denying a mere substitution of nature by flowers and vice versa. Drawings of flowers
elicited less positive emotions than photos, as people related more to the art than to the flower itself.
Our study reveals the importance of ornamental flowers and nature in our life and well-being, and as
such their cultivation and promotion are essential
of the arts, as recently reported in a scoping review by the World Health
Organization. The creative arts in particular are acknowledged to be a public
health resource that can be beneficial for well-being and health. Within this
broad context, and as a subfield of participatory arts, the term social arts
(SA) specifically refers to an art made by socially engaged professionals (e.g.,
artists, creative arts therapists, social workers, etc.) with non-professionals
who determine together the content and the final art product (in theater,
visual arts, music, literature, etc.) with the aim to produce meaningful social
changes. SA can enhance individual, community, and public health in times of
sociopolitical instability and is an active field in Israel. However, SA is still an
under-investigated field of study worldwide that is hard to characterize, typify,
or evaluate. This paper presents a research protocol designed to examine a
tripartite empirically-based model of SA that will cover a wide range of SA
training programs, implementations, and impacts. The findings will help refine
the definition of SA and inform practitioners, trainers, and researchers, as well
as funding bodies and policymakers, on the content and impact of SA projects
in Israel and beyond
lesser form of art compared to so-called fine arts including poetry, architecture,
and sculpture (Parker & Pollock, 2013). Industrialization further reduced the
need for craftspeople. Even with the renewed interest in craft practices in Western
countries, crafts are often associated with working class people, often from
racial and ethnic minorities. Craft is not usually associated with creativity or with
social arts (Berger, 2005; Kaimal et al., 2017; Lippard, 1995; Timm-Bottos, 2011).
This marginalization of craft practices can also be found in art therapy discourses:
Psychodynamic and humanistic art therapy approaches tend to focus on the aim of
authentic individualized self-expression and on process rather than product (Huss,
2015; Kaimal et al., 2017; Rubin, 1999). When the field was first forming, art therapists
were at pains to be differentiated from occupational therapists, who used crafts
to work on motor skills. In more current art therapy theories, crafts have been conceptualized
as a calming, mindful activity that helps to self-regulate emotions and
improve mood, as in the case of drawing mandalas as a form of meditation. Crafts
have also been understood as a way to support problem solving, perseverance, and
other skills often lost in neurological impairment (Collier, 2011; Dalebroux et al.,
2008). Crafts are often not considered “creative” in terms of authentic self-expression,
therapeutic in terms of providing a way to reach the unconscious, or socially communicative
in terms of social art aiming to shift society.
Overall, the social context for impoverished single women and single mothers
points to intense difficulty in finding work alone, let alone in reaching professional
self-fulfilment. The statistics in the U.S. on single impoverished women’s
employment show that firstly, over eighty percent of those living in poverty
are women and only a third of these find adequately paid and protected jobs
by their late twenties. Additionally, around forty-two percent of at-risk young
women return to welfare support within four years of starting work. (Bynner
& Parsons 2001, 2002; Harris 1996. From this, then the interaction of gender
and poverty makes the odds of young impoverished women finding work at
all and self-fulfilment in work even smaller (Côté 1996; Cozareli & Wilkinson
2001; Zucker & Wiener 1993). Within this context, it is not surprising that the
focus tends to be on helping these young women find work without stopping
to explore how they define self-fulfilment, that is a concept reserved for middle-
class women. Indeed, the gap between this dire reality and the prevalent
media images of success for young women that magically manage to overcome
social disadvantages make the gap between reality and cultural images of selfactualisation
even harder to bridge (Harris 1996; Pavetti & Acs 1997; Vincent
& Osler 2003). This lack of real chance to ‘self-actualise’ through employment
as compared to middle-class women raises the question of if and how impoverished
young women do define success, or future dreams, or self-actualisation
for themselves (Brown 2001; Coiro 2001). Although these young women may
not have access to social symbolic and financial capital that enables self-fulfilment
through employment, they have the right to self-define goals, or visions
of self-fulfilment, that middle-class women take as their natural right: on this
level, then images of self-fulfilment can be a base to ‘dare to dream’, but also
a base for critical consciousness raising as to the reality and meaning
n.p.). This study highlights meanings of belly dancing in a multi-generational, inter-cultural
group of women citizens of the state of Israel. As discussed initially in Huss
and Haimovich (2011), 22 women, ages 25–60, participated in a 6-week series of
once-weekly, 90 min belly dancing sessions run by the Women’s Forum at Ben
Gurion University (BGU). This chapter revisits the original study to extend its “site
specific” personal-to-political analysis in dialogue with the growing body of literature
on belly dance’s global status as a mode of “empowerment” across genders
(Hobin, 2015; Sellers-Young, 2016a, 2016b).
BGU is located in Beer-Sheva, a small university town in the Negev Desert of
southern Israel with a largely Sephardic (Arab) and immigrant population. Like
most Israeli universities, BGU has a mostly female administrative staff and a predominantly
male academic profile (Hazan, 2008). Ashkenazi (European) students
outnumber Sephardic by about three to one (Meir, 2005). Approximately half of the
22 participants in the study were Jews of Ashkenazi origin while the rest were
Sephardic Jews and one Arab Muslim woman. Participants, most of whom were
mothers, presented a range of body sizes and levels of fitness.
In Israel, as elsewhere, belly dance is often practiced as a leisure dance form in
sports clubs and extra-curricular settings, with enough interest to support an annual
competition in Tel Aviv (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueZPtZLwMiI). Aligning
with historical and contemporary literature on the functions and effects of belly
dance for women, participants in the present study described experiences that move
beyond belly dance’s recreational and commercial value, touching on areas of
school for refugee children sustained by volunteers
and refugee teachers and based on humanistic intercultural
values. The methodology is participatory including the
whole school, from children to teachers to volunteers and
managers. Central themes in the findings include a synergetic
focus on creative placemaking, conflict negotiation
and formal studies. This points to a theoretical connection
between informal and formal studies. The findings teach us
about the needs of refugee children. A methodological contribution
is the use of arts-based methods to capture refugee
children's lived experiences of school.
This paper describes a single-session Social Art intervention with a group of Eritrean migrant detainees in Israel
during which they described their journey and created messages to the hegemonic Israeli society. The paper
describes the protocol of the puzzle art intervention. It then presents the central themes within the asylum
seekers’ art that include remembering home, the traumatic journey, arriving in Israel, and pleas to have empathy
and to enable them to be free rather than imprison them. The aim of this case study is theoretical, using the case
study to describe the characteristics and mechanisms of Social Arts (SA) as manifested in this activity. It shows
how a SA orientation integrates the dual areas of psychological and also social agency. This is discussed as a
complex theoretical challenge as well as an advantage. This paper hopes to illuminate the complexity of elements
of SA as a specific and under-researched direction within art therapy. The descriptive arts activity also provides a
protocol for using arts in similar shared reality group and community contexts.
This article utilizes arts-based methods as a feminist methodology for
understanding women’s experiences in military service, according to theories
of feminist security studies. It explores how non-combatant women in the
army retrospectively narrate stressful situations that happened during their
military service. Using arts-based methods, we examine how they derive
meaning from their experiences in a masculine, military environment,
affected by ongoing conflict. This article analyzes twenty images drawn by
Israeli women who served in the army in the previous 2–4 years. The women
drew a stressful event from their military service, explained the image, and
elaborated on how they coped with the situation. A content analysis of the
pictures and the narratives produced three themes: the responsibility for
others in life threatening situations, the military as a first professional work
experience and the interaction between military and gender hierarchies.
In general, women soldiers experienced the army as complex as they
encountered their first adult work space in which they learned responsibility
and skills of the ‘adults’ world’. However, they were also exposed to a rigid
hierarchy and to stressful security situations typical of army contexts. While
non-combat women soldiers were allegedly protected from the violence
of the army, they are also indirectly exposed to the danger inherent in an
army context. This analysis goes beyond the hero narrative, and moves into
taboo territories of young women’s narratives and experiences in the military.
Dibujando (y utilizando) las experiencias y narrativas militares
The importance of this book, and of its above-mentioned predecessors, is that it goes beyond prescribing art therapy activities for static art therapy populations, and enables art therapists to work through a theoretical prism as a base for addressing different interventions, skills and populations. A limitation of this book is that it does not break down these theories into a skill-set for practical art therapy practice, as do the other books in this genre. However, this book does provide a thoughtful introduction to each theory and nicely illustrates each on a general level.
Another limitation of this book is that the word critical is used somewhat loosely and as such is misleading as there is no general explanation of this concept, and of the implication of a critical hermeneutic stand, in relation to all of the theories in the book. A critical stand by definition demands placing theories within their historical context, so as to deconstruct their absolute power (Huss, 2015).
Additionally, a critical stand demands a critique of each of the theories in the book. This is also lacking. Lack of historical and critical context means that each of the theories tends to 'float in space' and is not connected on a time-line or through an organizing critique to the other theories. For example, the book starts with cognitive theory, and then moves on to a dynamic theory. Gestalt theory is provided as an additional chapter, but is in fact part of a dynamic orientation (Huss, 2015). There also seems to be a confusion between critical theories, and feminist theories, that are not exactly the same thing.
A more effective way to make these theories more accessible but also to maintain a critical stand may have been to outline the impact of the theory on setting, therapists, role, different types of population, and intervention skills, and to state the limitations of each of these theories as well as the advantages. This has been done in former books of this name, but these books are left out of the literature surveyed. This is a strong limitation, in that much of the existing theoretical literature within art therapy is missing (Allen, 1995; Arrington, 2001; Betinsky, 1995; Buchalter, 2009; Burns, 1997; Cambell, 1999; Case& Daly, 1990; Dalley et al., 1993; Edwards, 2001; Emmerson & Smith, 2002; Furth, 1998; Hass-Cohen, 2003, 2008; Huss, 2012, 2015; Kalmanovitz & Loyd, 2005; Kramer, 2000; Landgarten, 2003; Liebman, 2003; Malchiodi, 2007; Mason, 2002; Moon, 2003, 2008; Pink& Kurty, 2004; Riley & Malchiodi, 1994; Robbins, 1994; Skype& Hayle, 1988; Wadeson,2000), to name just a few. This does not build on former work and so tends to weaken the existing theoretical base of art therapy.
However, together with these limitations, as stated, the most important thing is that this book, with its predecessors, encourages art therapy to seriously engage with theory. It is an important part of the revival of the understanding of the importance of theory within art therapy.
ESWRA
We will be doing a workshop on the first day of the conference of the associaion in Aalborg this spring