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argument that creativity, in the human capacity to imagine, is essential to the survival
of the species.
Dr Hans Prinzhorn, an early 20 th century psychiatrist and art historian, accumulated a
vast collection of artworks made by patients in mental institutions but generally not
made as part of treatment, to explore the creative drive. He identifies a number of
specific urges that drive creativity, naming them as “expressive, playful/active,
decorative or ornamental, ordering, copying and the need for symbols” and concludes,
as Schmid does, that creativity is an essential human trait “found not only in the realm
of the cultured or educated, but … present within each of us from childhood” (Maizels
15).
According to Danita Walsh (in Lewis and Doyle 78), “creativity underpins our health
and wellbeing” as an enabling process that helps us “learn about, relate to and evolve
with life” and is therefore an essential component in keeping us connected to the self
and to others (78). For others, including project participants, creativity is a means of
emancipation, as skillfully executed works speak to the social situation of the makers
(Goldbard 21). In her essay on factors that encourage or inhibit creativity, Frances
Reynolds describes creativity in terms of individual traits, some of which are originality,
openness to experience, abstraction, resistance to premature closure and a tolerance
of ambiguity (in Schmid 91). She uses the term “intrinsic motivation”, that is, being
interested, enjoying and satisfied by the process for its own sake, as a key to
understanding the creative drive (in Schmid 93). In discussing the effectiveness of a
creative practice upon those with a chronic illness or disability, Reynolds acknowledges
it acts as an effective “antidote” to many of the difficulties surrounding an individual’s
condition, noting participants feel a renewed sense of agency and control in their lives
and that it allowed the setting of meaningful goals (105).
Much within the Art and Health research relates to mental health and therefore has
relevance to and informs this study because of the many crossovers that exist between
the experience of trauma and the grief and loss resulting from it and mental ill health.
Some research addresses art interventions with traumatised people and communities,
such as Lindy Joubert’s writing about children traumatised through war, famine,
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