Critical perspectives in the arts therapies: Response/ability across a continuum of practice

This article advances a vision of response/ability in the arts therapies that can respond to the persistence of social exclusion and its impact on mental health, promote diversity, and situate social justice as central to healing. A critical lens, which takes into account how dominant narratives function as a form of social control, is used to analyze and discuss an example of community based art therapy, clinical music therapy, and drama therapy pedagogy. The authors advocate for an epistemological broadening of the body of knowledge in the arts therapies in order to render visible the ways in which arts therapists and educators create spaces of freedom, resistance, experimentation, and empowerment.