A Triple Insider's Take on Arts Therapy, Arts-based Community Development, and Huntington's Disease

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on my experiences as someone with Huntington's Disease who works professionally as a development ethnomusicologist, and who creates musical, video, and graphic arts for healing in communities I know. People struggling with disease and trauma benefit enormously by identifying their needs and goals, finding and valuing their artistic resources, and sparking creativity from within their and their social networks' artistry that addresses those needs. Therapists and others can contribute to these processes best by using methods that include eliciting artistic biographies, sparking community creativity, and becoming multiartistic activists.

Keywords

• Huntington's Disease
• applied
• expressive arts
• artistic biography