The Art at the Start project aims to publish high quality research as the project progresses and we will flag up publications here as we go along.
Evaluating Create Together
The outcomes from a successful pilot of the Create Together art therapy groups were published in the Infant Mental Health Journal in 2015.
Armstrong and Howatson (2015) Parent-infant Art Psychotherapy: A Creative Dyadic Approach to Early Intervention. Infant Mental Health Journal. 36:2
Outcomes from Create Together parent-infant art therapy
We published the next stage of our research in the International Journal of Art Therapy, using qualitative and quantitative measures to evaluate the outcomes for parents and their infants from attending art psychotherapy groups
(2019) A dyadic art psychotherapy group for parents and infants – piloting quantitative methodologies for evaluation, International Journal of Art Therapy
Talking About Art
Our PhD student, Holly Rumble, explored the impact of Dundee Contemporary Art’s Create Space on family learning. Her 2019 MSc dissertation, Talking About Art, is available as a PDF Talking About Art Full Report
Integrative Literature Review
We have published an integrative literature review, looking at the evidence base for an art therapy approach with parents and infants together.
Book Chapter – Mechanisms of change in parent-infant art therapy
Our chapter on the mechanisms of change in art therapy with parents and infants, including lots of examples from case material, has been published in Hogan, S (2020), Therapeutic Arts in Pregnancy, Birth and New Parenthood, Routledge , London.
Our report – Art boxes supporting parents and infants to share creative interactions at home: an art-based response to improve well-being during COVID-19 restrictions – is published open-access in Public Health
This report looks at our preliminary findings from interviews with parents who received a Home Art Box over the period of Covid-19 restrictions. We saw several benefits including increased parental confidence to make art together and increasing connections between parent and child.
Case study on the Royal Society for Public Health’s AHP hub
Our case study on the work of Art at the Start within the DCA including art therapy sessions, public sessions and Home Art Boxes in an example of best practice in art therapy on the Allied Health Professionals Hub
https://www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/resources/allied-health-professionals-hub/case-studies.html
Engage Journal special edition on Class and Inequality – Vicky and Sarah write about how their activity to deliver art materials to vulnerable families over the pandemic was able to address inequalities in health and arts access
Public Talk – Vicky presented on our project at an RSE event focused on infant wellbeing.
Full results from the Home Art Boxes
Our full results of our interviews with parents on how they experienced the home art boxes are published open access in Frontiers, showing the potential of art making to support wellbeing and attachment relationships