Art and Social Work: an intervention programme for transforming society’s vision to include people with early-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s

This paper presents a program centred on arts and education as tools in social work for the inclusion of people with earlyonset dementia and Alzheimer’s. The objective of the programme is to eradicate the stigma and myths associated with the disease.The program is part of the Junta de Castilla y León and the European Social Fund’s ARS Project (Arte y Salud Alzheimer; Alzheimer’s Art & Health). The programme presents a series of evaluated artistic and educational activities that can be undertaken by people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and that can also be used by caregivers and family when working with this group of people, with the aim of improving their wellbeing, self-esteem and quality of life.

Social Work and theatre: considering intersections

Theatre is a cultural and artistic form that involves a process of communication between creators and is received in a space and time located in the public sphere, which has meant that, over the centuries, it has acted as a space for expression, exchange and debate regarding all manner of ideas, causes and struggles. Implicit within this process are processes of expression, creation and reception, by way of which people demonstrate, analyse and question ways of seeing and understanding life, and ways of being and existing in the world. This gives rise to educational, cultural, social and political potential, which has been endorsed in numerous studies and investigations. In this work, in which theoretical orientation is established through a review of the relevant literature, we consider different intersections that occur between theatre and social work in order to also show that dramatic and theatrical expression offers substantive methodologies for achieving some objectives of social work, particularly in areas such as critical literacy, reflexivity and recognition, awareness raising, social participation, personal and/or community development, ownership of cultural capital and access to personal and social wellbeing.

Society, theatre and Social Work: beauty will save us

Three different worlds, sometimes concentric and often intersecting —society, theatre and the art of performance— and social work. Diverse worlds that live, reflect and self-reflect and interact, and can also afford an opportunity for meeting, misunderstanding and confrontation, and above all offer the possibility of profound change.This article considers the experience of a theatre company that has spent more than three years moving at the limits of these three universes. To these three worlds can be added an infinite number of words that fill them with meaning and significance: territory, meeting, diversity and search. An artistic experience that has chosen to focus on creating scenarios for debate and to examine the difficulties, the human contradictions and the constant and inexhaustible confrontation with human experience. At the heart of this theatrical activity is all of this, seeking the balance between narration, meeting, investigation and the artistic dimension. This meeting between society, theatre and social work also contains the search for sustainability of this cultural business, in an Italy that has been destroyed by a crisis that is not merely economic, but also of values and, above all, of role models. The guiding theme, though not always made explicit, is always present and essential: the search for beauty.

Art, adolescence and Social Work: Anja, the invisible manager

This article has been written with the intention of being able to analyse the contributions of art —theatre, in this case— to the practice of social work. For this purpose, we have chosen to read the social reality in which we intervene through the lens of social constructionism. This helps us to rescue the social and subjective side of art, and, moreover, to recover the depathologization of the subject in professional intervention. Thus, using a practical case taken from work with adolescents in the German FSJ programme, hand-in-hand with a young girl called Anja we trace the developmental and sociological aspects of adolescence in order to later address certain common points of art and psychosocial work. Art will hence be redefined as a transitional object allowing questions to be addressed relating to (self-) perception, attachment, communication and changes in conduct as the ultimate goal of professional action. Lastly, we note the limitations and risks of art-based intervention, in order to conclude with a final synopsis.