Art /Art Education Terminology

Artist-in-residence programs exist to invite artists, academicians, curators, and all manner of creative people for a time and space away from their usual environment and obligations. They provide a time of reflection, research, presentation and/or production. They also allow an individual to explore his/her practice within another community; meeting new people, using new materials, experiencing life in a new location. Art residencies emphasize the importance of meaningful and multi-layered cultural exchange and immersion into another culture. Some residency programs are incorporated within larger institutions.

Arts-based research encompasses a range of research approaches and strategies that utilize one or more of the arts in investigation. Such approaches have evolved from understandings that life and experiences of the world are multifaceted, and that art offers ways of knowing the world that involve sensory perceptions and emotion as well as intellectual responses. It may be used to collect or create data, to interpret or analyze it, to present their findings, or some combination of these. Sometimes arts-based research is used to investigate art making or teaching in or through the arts. Sometimes it is used to explore issues in the wider social sciences.

Art therapy combines the creative process and psychotherapy, facilitating self-exploration and understanding. Using imagery, colour and shape as part of this creative therapeutic process, thoughts and feelings can be expressed that would otherwise be difficult to articulate.

In Canada and the United States, art therapists must have at minimum a master’s degree or a master’s level diploma in art therapy before identifying themselves within the profession. This graduate level education includes supervised clinical practicum hours (minimum requirement for all practicums is 700 hours and at least 350 of these hours should involve direct client contact), thus ensuring the safety of the client as well as professional liability for agencies and employers offering this form of therapy.

https://www.canadianarttherapy.org/

Community art is artistic activity that is based in a community setting, characterised by interaction or dialogue with the community and often involving a professional artist collaborating with people who may not otherwise engage in the arts.

The notion of community art evolved out of the idea of cultural democracy. Cultural democracy emerged after the Second World War and describes practices in which culture and artistic expression are generated by individuals and communities rather than by institutions of central power. Cultural democracy seeks to democratize culture in order to bring about an awareness and appreciation of art to as wide a section of society as possible; and to break down the boundaries between high and low culture in order to make art accessible to a wider audience.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/community-art

A gallery is a place where art is exhibited rather than made. Galleries are clean uncluttered spaces with their own lighting systems. ideally they also have climate control which maintains control of humidity.

Commercial galleries represent a roster of artists and sell the work which is displayed. Public galleries and Artist Run Centres, pay artist to show their work and do not typically sell the work on display. Public galleries often charge admission.

Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor “walk” in, on, and around them; some others ask the artist or the spectators to become part of the artwork.

Interactive art is a genre of art in which the viewers participate in some way by providing an input in order to determine the outcome. Unlike traditional art forms wherein the interaction of the spectator is merely a mental event, interactivity allows for various types of navigation, assembly, and/or contribution to an artwork, which goes far beyond purely psychological activity. Interactivity as a medium produces meaning.

https://www.hisour.com/interactive-art-21343/

Music therapy is a discipline in which music is used purposefully within therapeutic relationships to support development, health, and well-being. Music therapists use music safely and ethically to address human needs within cognitive, communicative, emotional, musical, physical, social, and spiritual domains.

https://www.musictherapy.ca/about-camt-music-therapy/about-music-therapy/

Participatory art is a term that describes a form of art that directly engages the audience in the creative process so that they become participants in the event. In this respect, the artist is seen as a collaborator and a co-producer of the situation (with the audience), and these situations can often have an unclear beginning or end.

Participatory art has its origins in the futurist and Dada performances of the early twentieth century, which were designed to provoke, scandalise and agitate the public. In the late 1950s the artist Allan Kaprow devised performances called happenings, in which he would coerce the audience into participating in the experience.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/participatory-art

The art, science or profession of teaching.

Photovoice is a qualitative method used in community-based participatory research to document and reflect reality. It is an empowering and flexible process that combines photography with grassroots social action and is commonly used in the fields of community development, international development, public health, and education.

Placemaking is a hands-on approach for making a meaningful change or impact in a neighborhood, city or a particular architectural site. Placemaking interacts with the unique geography, architecture, culture, and heritage of space and is a way for residents, or regular site-users, to feel ownership and belonging in that public space; and to use it in a way that is fitting and specific to the needs of their own needs and abilities.

In broader contexts, public art is commissioned for a specific public space by an individual or a group. Parks, government buildings, banks, schools, churches, hotels, stations, head offices and restaurants are some of the settings for displaying immobile works, with the composition, dimensions and proportions blending into and gaining meaning from the surroundings. The theme of the particular artwork may relate to the function of the building or environment it enhances.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/public-art

In the contexts of an Artist-in-Residence working in a care-based setting we can add the collaborative aspect into the mix. For example, in the 2021, Impact of an artist-in-residence program in a complex continuing care hospital: a quality improvement investigation study (Arts & Health Journal) from the Bruyère Research Institute, “public art” refers to art that is created with the intention of engaging the community broadly through the presentation of finished artworks as cohesive, contemporary art installations, co-conceived specifically for a particular site or a particular moment in time.”

https://doi.org/10.1080/17533015.2021.1948432

Discovery process carried out to select optimal sites for situating artworks or performances. The nature of two or three-dimensional, or digital, art installations can be permanent or temporary. Performances may be single or reoccurring events.
Site analysis in healthcare sites must consider sightlines of all viewers, not just standing individuals, as with almost every other institution. A preliminary assessment will also consider the “look”, the given color and lighting of a site, the traffic flow, and usual site-user activities, at different times of the day and evening.

Safety is considered: cleaning of permanent art pieces; possible damage or possible vandalism concerns.

Besides being a helpful planning stage, site analysis with patients has proved to be a friendly way to create new interest in an upcoming art project, and welcome new participants; since patients/residents are the most important and “full-time” site users! When staff members go by an artist and patient discussing the various sites, they can recognize the patients’ own agency and vital contributions to the in-building community.

Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork.

Outdoor site-specific artworks often include landscaping combined with permanently sited sculptural elements (the movement is linked with Environmental art). Indoor site-specific artworks may be created in conjunction with (or indeed by) the architects of the building.

Art which uses sound both as its medium (what it is made out of) and as its subject (what it is about).

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/sound-art

Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art is interdisciplinary in nature, or takes on hybrid forms. Sound art can engage with subjects such as acoustics, psychoacoustics, electronics, noise music, audio media, found or environmental sound, explorations of the human body, sculpture, film or video and an ever-expanding set of subjects that are part of the current discourse of contemporary art.

A broad designation for poetry intended for performance. Though some spoken word poetry may also be published on the page, the genre has its roots in oral traditions and performance. Spoken word can encompass or contain elements of rap, hip-hop, storytelling, theater, and jazz, rock, blues, and folk music. Characterized by rhyme, repetition, improvisation, and word play, spoken word poems frequently refer to issues of social justice, politics, race, and community. Related to slam poetry, spoken word may draw on music, sound, dance, or other kinds of performance to connect with audiences.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/spoken-word

A space where are artist, or artists make art. Artist will often teach, sell or exhibit their work at this location as well, but if they don’t make work there as well it technically is not a studio. Generally studios have space to store art and supplies, the walls and floors do not need to be protected from paint or other mediums. Ideally studios will be properly ventilated with fans to allow chemicals from oil paints or dust from pottery, plaster or wood to removed from the space. Painters prize large windows to allow for natural light.