Detoxing university through creative engagement

Abstract

This chapter outlines a philosophy of higher education practice that includes emphasis on using creativity to engage students, both in and outside of formal classes, to improve wellbeing. In an age of increasing discourse preoccupied with division and difference, individuals’ feelings of isolation and loneliness, increased student debt, lack of job opportunities and societal destabilisation, there is urgent need for a philosophy of ‘togetherness’. In developing this ideal of coming together, the benefits to mental health and wellbeing are many. Further, the way we conduct research in the academy is something to consider more carefully too. The choice of our research methodologies may not be as benign as we might think and can shift perceptions and distort values over time. The past decade has revealed an unhealthy preoccupation with measurement and performance rankings which has been pervasive amongst the neoliberalist higher education sector. However, lived experience, feelings and creative endeavour resist numerical reduction. Running alongside this issue has been growing calls across those working in wellbeing and education to increase usage of art-based approaches in understanding and evidencing the benefits of expressive art practice. To these ends, this chapter offers hope in how creative activity might bring about essential change to combat a corporate hardening that has in recent times ruthlessly hijacked the love of learning and indeed the love of enabling others. Reporting on an initiative where artistic processes have been used as an antidote to the ‘toxic university’, the chapter explores what we can do to bring about positive change for both students and staff.