Editorial – Embracing multimodal, inclusive and socially engaged practices

Ying (Ingrid) Wang

As JoCAT enters its 20th year, we not only celebrate a significant milestone but also affirm the evolving vision and application of the creative arts therapy field. To mark the occasion, we have been ‘dropping’  key historical articles from JoCAT's predecessor ANZJAT alongside new content, illustrating the continuity and development of arts therapy research across 20 years. 

The contributions in this first landmark issue of Volume 20 span geographical borders, therapeutic modalities, and artistic forms, yet they share a central commitment: the power of arts for healing, transformation, self-inquiry, and social connection. This issue embraces embodied, inclusive, and socially responsive practices that reflect the complex realities and expansive potential of creative arts therapy today.

We begin with hands,
in rhythm, in breath,
kneading memory from earth,
shaping presence into healing.

We begin within self and with others,
in stillness, in focusing and in silence,
holding stories in colours and movements,
being with the world through creating

We begin again
not to explain and sometime without a purpose,
but to listen or witness
what emerges when we stay with arts. [1]

The embodied relational core

Several contributions in this issue foreground the embodied, sensory-rich dimensions of creative arts therapy. Theresa Van Lith and Caitlin Beale’s article, A grounded theory exploration of sensory and kinaesthetic engagement with clay, invites participants into a tactile world where the materiality of clay becomes a conduit for emotional regulation, sensory integration, and reflective inquiry. Their research illustrates how clay carries memory, how the interplay of touch and form allows the past and present to converge in therapeutic setting. The accompanying podcast conversation with Van Lith offers deeper insights into the possibilities and precautions of working with clay, emphasising the deeply personal and relational dimensions that emerge through clay-based engagement.

Shanti Brown’s article on cultivating therapeutic presence adds another layer to this embodied exploration. Drawing on Moore’s (2015) notion of “time out of time” and Gendlin’s (1969) concept of the “felt sense”, Brown reflects on her own journey as an emerging therapist navigating uncertainty through mindfulness, focusing, and art-making. While Van Lith and Beale analyse participant responses, Brown turns inward, offering a nuanced self-exploration of presence as both a state of being and a therapeutic skill. As McNiff (2015) suggests, repetitive gestures in art-making may resemble mindful breathing, grounding people in moment-to-moment awareness. Together, these works challenge the disembodiment of modern life and underscore the therapist’s responsibility to be grounded and attuned, both to themselves and those they work with.

The short video piece ClayDance: A collaborative exploration of combining clay work with dance and movement visually complements these written reflections. It depicts a playful, exploratory space where presence, rhythm, and collective movement converge through clay. The video captures what it means to co-regulate through creative action where “the mauri of all present” is held and expressed through dance and material (Reyneke-Barnard et al., 2025).

Applied practice across diverse contexts

This issue also signals a widening scope of arts therapy practice, extending into community, educational, and institutional settings. Ardhana Riswaire’s practice paper on integrating art therapy into a tsunami preparedness project in Lebak Selatan, Indonesia, offers an innovative model of community-based resilience work. Through nature-based interventions and found objects, the project evokes metaphor and emotion, demonstrating how creative arts therapy can support disaster risk reduction. This work also emphasises the crucial role of environmental intersectionality in navigating the psychosocial impacts of climate-related crises. It contributes to growing knowledge of the intersection of arts and disaster.

This issue features several papers that explore the power of arts in the development of children in educational settings. Meytal Fogel-Simhony and Gal Abramovski explore the role of arts therapy within special education settings in Israel, each focusing on different aspects of therapeutic relationships within a school system, with student clients and with their parents. Their dual case studies reveal the complexity embedded in school-based therapy and advocate for sensitive, relational approaches that account for parents’ prior experiences with institutional systems (Plotnik, 2008; Snir et al., 2018). They highlight both the opportunities and tensions that arise when arts therapy intersects with educational structures. In a practice-based paper, authors Natalie Kang Qian Yi and Chong Kai Wen describe how they designed a creative programme by integrating art and music into classroom routines, using songs and art-making to co-create singable books that fostered children’s sense of self, peer awareness and connection. Both papers provide valuable insights into the school readiness and inclusion of creative arts therapies, bridging the educational focus and therapeutic goals for children in educational settings.

In Creating space for meaning: Exploring emotional integration through psychodynamic art therapy in forensic mental health, Abigail Reisner, Theresa Van Lith, Danielle Ashley and Lorrae Mynard offer a compelling case study from a forensic mental health institutional care in Australia. Using the therapeutic triangle of client, artwork, and therapist, the study demonstrates how psychodynamic art therapy supports emotional integration and relational safety for individuals with schizophrenia in high-security settings. Through imagery, metaphor, and co-regulated presence, the client can engage with themes of identity, trauma, spirituality, and moral reflection. These applied case studies showcase how arts therapy translates across contexts, bridging theory with real-world challenges from classrooms to disaster zones to forensic institutional care settings.

Creative moments and emerging voices

This issue also includes vibrant contributions that celebrate creativity as a personal and communal act. In the essay, From there and then, to here and how: Reflections on arts-making and identities through an art therapy graduate exhibition, Chee Xingyu Michelle, Koh Zong Qi, Natalie Tee Yen Sean, and Svetlana (Lana) Fedotova, four graduates from LASALLE College of the Arts’ MA Art Therapy programme, reflect on their experiences as artists and trainee therapists. Their reflections on identity, transformation, and exhibition-making offer an authentic, creative, personal glimpse into professional emergence. In Seasons of self, Anita Lever provides an engaging and thought-provoking self-reflection on an exhibition she was involved in.

Creative works from Amelia Yiakmis and Amanda Levey, and Andrea Marina Garabelli further enrich this issue, employing poetry, craft-making, movement, and dance to explore creative processes. These offerings underscore the power of arts-based knowledge and the value of alternative, non-verbal forms of scholarship and practice.

The review section adds depth to this issue of JoCAT by contextualising current discourse within broader therapeutic and cultural conversations. Amanda Levey reviews Psychedelics and Art Therapy: A Trauma-Informed Manual for Somatic Self-Discovery by Charmaine Husum, a book that positions itself within the growing intersection of psychedelic-assisted therapy and somatic art practices. Georgia Polichroniadis reviews Art Therapy as Cumulative Trauma Repair by Jennifer Albright Knash, contributing to the conversation around trauma-informed practice. Richard Wainwright and Bobbie Rasmussen-Merz reflect on the legacy of intermodal expressive arts therapy 30 years after the publication of the seminal book Minstrels of Soul by Paolo J. Knill, Helen Nienhaus Barba and Margo Fuchs, offering insights into the foundational philosophies of the field.

In Truth-telling and Truth-listening, Jo Campbell and Tessa Priest respond to Tennant Creek Brio’s work of powerful intersection of art, Indigenous storytelling, and social justice. This review invites readers to consider the ethical dimensions of witnessing and listening, particularly in contexts shaped by systemic trauma, colonial histories and ongoing practices of colonisation. A similar thread runs through Georgia Polichroniadis’ review of Internal Landscapes, an exhibition featuring works by four First Nation artists. Both reviews foreground the tension between ‘art therapy’ and ‘art as therapy’. While these artworks were not created within a traditional therapeutic alliance, they nonetheless enact therapeutic processes through materiality, presence, self-expression and receptions.

Volume 20, number 1 reflects the multiplicity of creative arts therapy today: its academic rigour, embodied presence, social relevance, and creative integration. We hope this issue deepens your connection to the field and inspires new pathways for inquiry and action.