36 • Introduction to Art Therapy
a team of twenty staff members—artists, arts educators, and arts therapists. All of them
shared a sensitivity to the cultures of the children and families who lived in the neighbor-
hoods being served. Equally important, all had experience and skill in helping others to
create in their particular art form.
A film, Children & the Arts (in Rubin, 2008c), showing that program and the value of the
arts for youngsters was first produced in 1974 and has recently been remastered for a DVD
on The Arts as Therapy for Children (Rubin, 2008c) including two additional features: one
about an art program for orphans and malnourished children in Guatemala conducted by
an art therapist, and the other produced by Very Special Arts of Massachusetts about healthy
ways of introducing different arts materials and activities. Excerpts from the Introduction to
the remastered version of Children & the Arts can be seen on the DVD (A).
For four years (1993–1997) I worked with an established organization, the Pittsburgh
Center for the Arts, to develop a Community Arts Education Network. Like other art thera-
pists, I functioned in a variety of roles, depending on the need. I was a consultant to a weav-
ing program for people with chronic mental illness, a photography program for delinquent
teenagers (Figure 2.9), a workshop on healing art for cancer patients, and an arts enrich-
ment program for alienated adolescents. I also co-led group therapy with a drama therapist
for women in an addiction rehabilitation program referred to earlier in this chapter.
As noted earlier, there can and should be room for artists, art teachers, and art thera-
pists, since each has special skills to offer. And people with problems—mental, physical,
socioeconomic—deserve all the help they can get, whether their difficulties are temporary
or chronic. Happily, multidisciplinary efforts are happening more often to meet the pressing
human needs of our time.
I am convinced that art can be therapeutic not only in clinics and hospitals, but also in
schools, studios, prisons, and shelters—wherever there is a need. The world is filled with
people who, especially when in crisis, could reap the therapeutic benefits of creating art if
it is offered in a respectful and sensitive way. I believe that we can best extend our reach by
building bridges with others whose values reflect our own.
Figure 2.9 A teenage photographer in a program at an arts center.