Portable Studio Inhabited: Art Therapy Mindfulness-Informed Practice with Refugees and Trauma

As part of the Artist-in-Residence series by the MA Art Therapy Programme, Dr Debra Kalmanowitz (PhD, HCPC, BAAT) will be making a presentation on the use of art therapy with refugees who have experienced trauma.

Through case examples, a combination of art therapy and mindfulness-informed practice will be explored. A focus on a few key ideas in work and volatile situations will allow one to unpack the notion of Portable Studio and mindfulness-informed practice, and how these are suited to work in very specific contexts.

During the war (1991–2000) in the former Yugoslavia, Debra and Bobby Lloyd were forced to define the parameters of their therapy work. Out of this volatile environment, where the situation was unpredictable and traditional clinical boundaries were impossible, the Portable Studio was developed.

Debra is a registered art therapist and artist who has worked with refugees in disaster situations or political violence as well as survivors of torture and social change for over 20 years.

She is a psychosocial professional advisor for an international non-government organisation, lecturer at the Academic College of Society and the Arts in Israel, and an Honorary Research Associate in the Centre on Behavioral Health, University of Hong Kong. She is also the co-author of The Portable Studio, Art Therapy and Political Violence: With Art, Without Illusion, and Art Therapy in Asia: To the Bone or Wrapped in Silk.