A colleague and I were pondering on this the other day as we are all in perpetual COVID-19 risk assessment mode - exploring the whys and wherefores of re-starting face-to-face Art Therapy. There is so much to consider of course.

However what we realised in this exploration was a difference between clinical risk assessment and art risk assessment that as Art Therapists we always meander around the edges of. Having worked in the NHS for many years, I was very well trained to formally and informally negotiate risk every day - risk that may impact and affect a person’s vulnerability, to self-harm, of suicide, and/or to others. It is an essential process that I am very grateful for as it embedded a confidence in this that enabled the other part of me to feel supported by - that other part was artist-me; art therapist me.

Why?

Because as artists, as creatives, as makers, we take risks all the time. It is part of the tool box in fact. An idea arises, we take a risk on going forward with it. A challenge comes and we risky look for ways to navigate it. A mistake happens and the risk of revision and adaptation arises. In many moments we step into the risk of not-knowing what will happen, open to its possibilities of something good, positive, liked, surprising, as well as the risk of disappointment, dislike, mess and destruction.

Ultimately we risk having to start again. To ‘fail’ or ‘succeed’ (whatever they mean).

So again, we see that the art therapist lingering around the periphery of clinical and creative risk assessment, brings something novel to the table of working with and for people needing support from Services and Therapies in some way. Often somewhere in there is fear. Fear as we know robs us of so much - not least our ability to take risks.

Fear and worry stop us from seeing mistakes, chances, synchronicities and newness as exciting opportunities for growth, change and potential. They are the root of anxiety and art making enables a contained, easy way to practice getting used to some of them. Simply on a piece of art. Within an art therapy relationship its even more manageable because its from within a partnership of growth and trust with an artist who is not afraid of it.

In clinical situations of course there is a very serious interface between safeguarding and risk taking - a tightrope to walk carefully along that is our professional and moral responsibility -I definitely m not negating this nor suggesting I don’t work carefully here myself. Of course I do. I assess the risk from both perspectives - that of the safe conformist applying policy and law whilst also trying to stay holding the skirts of other inner guides: the intuition, the gut, the heart, the creative spark and the fire of the person themselves. The embers are there in us all, but they may be deeply deeply hidden. And in seeing both these views, we help the fearful person see the possibilities too. And start to trust theirs.

…SO it IS A RISK to step off the wheel, to move to the edge, to wander around, one foot in front of the other on the wet grass tipping into the ravine of hollow conformity -

but it is not impossible, and you know what?
You will meet many others there.