Artivism: Creativity Heals in an Uncreative Place: Art and Art Therapy in Prison, with Dave Gussak

Artists and art therapists who wish to work in prison may believe that they will be operating within a highly structured and regulated system that restricts true creative expression and healing. Yet, for an environment that is perceived as stifling, desolate, and rigid, there are surprisingly inventive displays of creativity that occur within the walls. Counter-intuitively, innovative artistic expression is inherent –even championed–within this subculture. This presentation, through interviews and discussions with inmates in prison who create, numerous illustrations, and personal experiences, will explore not only the value that art offers this population, but this drive to create as well. In doing so, the speaker will illuminate the numerous creative workaround techniques that allow art to flourish and creativity to heal in this uncreative environment.

David E. Gussak, PhD, ATR-BC, HLM is Professor for the Florida State University’s Graduate Art Therapy Program and Project Coordinator for the FSU/FL Dept of Correction’s Art Therapy in Prisons program. He has presented and published extensively internationally and nationally on forensic art therapy and art therapy in forensic settings. These include, amongst others, Art on Trial: Art Therapy for Capital Murder Cases (2013), Art and Art Therapy with the Imprisoned: Re-Creating Identity (2019), and The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence (2022). In 2022, Dr. Gussak was granted the American Art Therapy Association’s Honorary Lifetime Member (HLM) award.

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Resources:

See here for an extensive list of publications by David Gussak.

The vision of Artivism: The Power of Art for Social Transformation is to generate a movement with committed social artivists in response to historic global unrest. Artivism aims to generate community through multi-disciplinary teamwork for a more dignified and meaningful coexistence, however you define these terms. The goal of this initiative is to nurture confidence in taking continuous action from wherever you are by means of reciprocity.

Artivism: The Power of Art Social Transformation, grew out of Illuminations of Social Imagination: Learning From Maxine Greene, (Dio Press, 2019), edited by Teachers College alumni Courtney Weida and Carolina Cambronero-Varela, and Dolapo Adeniji-Neill, of Adelphi University. "The concept for this book is inspired by the late Maxine Greene (2000), who described her enduring philosophical focus and legacy of social imagination as “the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, in our schools” (p. 5). 

-- Publisher's Description

 Artivism: The Power of Art Social Transformation is jointly sponsored by Adelphi University, Sing for Hope, and the Gottesman Libraries.