A free recorded talk from Tim Prentki and Salvo Pitruzzella from ICAF-8. Exploring the future of community art and what current developments in art therapy and neuroscience could contribute to strengthening its legitimacy.
Tim is well known as an applied performance scholar and cofounder of the theatre and development programme at Winchester University. Salvo is Professor of Art Education at the Palermo Fine Arts Academy and a pioneer of dramatherapy in Italy with over twenty-five years of experience working in mental health, education, and social care.
Posted: 04/12/2021
Tim is well known as an applied performance scholar and cofounder of
the theatre and development programme at Winchester University, subjects
about which he has published many books. He approaches applied art from
multiple perspectives (politics, education) with a strong foundation in
the humanities. He is well aware that over the past few decades social
scientists have been trying to capture the value or social impact of
community art with surveys and statistics. While some of this work has
led to useful insights, Tim believes that recent research in
neuroscience and neuropsychology may be more promising. It points to the
importance of empathy for building kinder less divided societies and
suggests that face-to-face participatory artistic processes can actually
help to increase it.
During two conversational sessions, Tim will explore the notion of
empathy and its connection with art, education and healing fractured
human relations together with Salvo Pitruzzella (Palermo, Italy). Salvo
is Professor of Art Education at the Palermo Fine Arts Academy and a
pioneer of dramatherapy in Italy with over twenty-five years of
experience working in mental health, education, and social care. He is
dramatherapy course leader at the Centro ArtiTerapie, Lecco. He has
widely published on dramatherapy, educational theatre, and creativity
theories. His latest book is Drama, Creativity and Intersubjectivity:
Roots of Change in Dramatherapy (London: Routledge, 2016). He argues:
it is essential to consider the social dimension of therapy: the
problems are not just on peoples psyche (or in their soul, or in their
brain), but in the relationships they have with the world. And we, as
therapists, are part of this world. According to Pitruzzella, science
points to compassion and creativity as two crucial factors that make us
human. Empathy is rooted in our mirror system, he claims, but it
takes an imaginative effort to actually turn it into compassion.
To watch the full talk, click here.
