What are You All Going to Do to Keep Black Women in Art Therapy?

A Womanist Manifesto for Creative Arts Therapies Education

Authors

  • Leah Gipson Art Therapy & Counseling, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
  • Marisol Norris Creative Arts Therapies & Counseling, Drexel University, USA
  • Leah Amaral Art Therapy & Counseling, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, USA
  • Johanna Tesfaye Art Therapy & Counseling, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, USA
  • Anna Hiscox Non-Affiliated

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15845/voices.v21i1.3200

Keywords:

Black women, arts therapies education, placemaking, Africana womanism, Cliff Joseph, critical pedagogy

Abstract

In this viewpoint, the authors describe their impressions of a 2018 conference and the significance of participating in a learning environment that centered on arts therapists of color. Collectively, two art therapy educators, a music therapy educator, one new professional art therapist, and one art therapy graduate student, question the maintenance of professional norms that have at times motivated BIPOC students and practitioners to leave the creative arts therapies in search of other professional places to thrive. The article concludes with a Womanist Manifesto for Arts Therapies Education.

Author Biographies

Leah Gipson, Art Therapy & Counseling, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA

Leah Gipson is Assistant Professor in the Art Therapy and Counseling Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She is a registered and board-certified art therapist (ATR-BC), and a licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC) in Illinois, with a Master of Theological Studies. Leah is a board member for A Long Walk Home, an organization that uses the arts to empower young people to end violence against girls and women. She is also a board member of Praxis, an organization that provides affordable, democratically managed housing to individuals and families involved in social justice movement building. She is a co-founder of the BIPOC Student Fund by Black Arts Therapy Educators and an organizing member of the Critical Pedagogy in the Arts Therapies Alliance, formed in 2018.

Marisol Norris, Creative Arts Therapies & Counseling, Drexel University, USA

Marisol Norris, PhD, is a music therapist, critical arts therapies educator, cultural worker, and founder of the Black Music Therapy Network, Inc. Her music therapy practice and supervisory experience have spanned medical and community health settings and include music therapy with adolescents experiencing housing insecurity, adults with psychiatric and dual diagnoses, families within the city court system and medically fragile children. These experiences have profoundly contributed to her multicultural relational lens and her dedication to fostering culturally sustaining, liberatory frameworks in music therapy education and practice. Her teaching and cultural work is an extension of a broader commitment to healing justice and dismantling relational and structural violence through community-based advocacy, education, and action.

Leah Amaral, Art Therapy & Counseling, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, USA

Leah Amaral is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and art therapist based out of Chicago. Amaral received a Master of Arts in Art Therapy and Counseling from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019. When pursuing her Master’s degree, she understood that her position as a student was an empowered place for activism. To address issues of equity and difference within art therapy education at a PWI, Amaral created Sister Circle in March 2019. Her work is understood from Black feminist ecological thought and womanist performance pedagogy; centering the experiences, knowledge, and stories of Black women and girls. Amaral currently works as a trauma informed clinical art therapist supporting families in reunification therapy. Amaral’s current body of work is understanding grief, loss, and cycles of violence through poetry, digital media, and memory as an archival site to process personal and collective experiences.

Johanna Tesfaye, Art Therapy & Counseling, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, USA

Johanna Tesfaye is a creative practitioner and amateur archivist, with an obsession for sound, performance, and moving image. Tesfaye’s artistic, professional work, and research focuses on ‘return’, collective memory, and memory performance as care. Tesfaye is currently a graduate student in Art Therapy and Counseling at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Anna Hiscox, Non-Affiliated

Dr. Hiscox is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Registered Art Therapist, Batterer Intervention Facilitator (BIF), and artist. Dr. Hiscox is an adjunct professor at National University where she teaches legal and ethical issues and art-based activities to graduate students. Dr. Hiscox received her doctorate degree in art therapy from Mt. Mary University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She holds master's degrees in marriage and family therapy and art therapy from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, CA. She received her bachelor’s degree in art education from The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. As a BIF, she implemented 52-week groups for male mandated participants for over 10- years. She retired from The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation where she used poetry, art therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy to help male inmates to cope with life sentences. Dr. Hiscox is an author, speaker, and consultant on multicultural issues. She co-edited the first multi-cultural book on art therapy, Tapestry of Cultural Issues in Art Therapy, Jessica Kingsley Publisher.

References

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Picture of the five authors

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Published

2021-04-20

How to Cite

Gipson, L., Norris, M., Amaral, L., Tesfaye, J., & Hiscox, A. (2021). What are You All Going to Do to Keep Black Women in Art Therapy? A Womanist Manifesto for Creative Arts Therapies Education. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.15845/voices.v21i1.3200

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 1 (2021): Special Multidisciplinary Issue on Black Aesthetics & the Arts Therapies

Section

Commentary

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Copyright (c) 2021 Leah Ra'chel Gipson, Marisol Norris, Leah Amaral, Johanna Tesfaye, Anna Hiscox

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