“… art has forms with ancient origins that enact historically inflected ways of knowing and being.”

from Susan Rowland, Jungian Arts-Based Research and the Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico (p. 24)

How do we use art as a means for generating knowledge, and vice versa? What do the different forms of art (such as music, poetry, dance, painting, writing, etc.) connect the psyche to? The London Arts-Based Research Centre is excited to announce the upcoming conference, “The Creative Psyche and Arts-Based Research”, to be held on June 10-11 at the Association of Jungian Analysts Centre in Camden, London (an online participation option will also be available). The conference will explore the intersections between creativity, the psyche, and arts-based research, as we seek to bring together diverse ideas, artefacts, and methods that show this connection. The psyche, with its creative use of both conscious and unconscious content, is a marvellous multi-dimensional entity, and we aim to look at the many ways and tools we can harness for both knowledge-making and the production of different types of art (visual, literary, musical, etc.).

We welcome proposals from creatives, academics, researchers, and practitioners from all over the world, whose work engages with the relationship between creativity and mental processes.

We invite proposals for papers, presentations, and creative works that engage with (but are not limited to) the following topics:

• The role of creativity in mental health and wellbeing
• Active imagination
• Arts-based research methods for exploring mental health issues
• Dreamwork
• Synchronicity and/or the psychoid realm in creativity
• Artography
• Art as a tool for individuation and/alchemy
• Poetry therapy
• Jungian arts-based research
• Poetic inquiry
• Archetypal reflections in creative expression
• Art therapy
• The role of dreams in writing poetry
• Modernist and post-modernist ideas connecting the psyche with art
• Visionary art
• Surrealist approaches to art
• Motivational psychology for creative writers
• Creativity and self-expression in mental health recovery
• Hypnotherapy in creative processes
• Myth as a healing method
• Approaches for transdisciplinarity
• Creativity and mental health stigma reduction
• The impact of mental illness on artistic expression and practice
• The relationship between mental health and creative blocks
• The potential of the arts for promoting mental health awareness and advocacy
• Arts-based research methods for exploring creativity
• The relationship between creativity and mental health
• The role of creativity in education and pedagogy
• Arts-based research and social justice
• The impact of technology on creativity and artistic practice
• Creative entrepreneurship
• The intersection of creativity and spirituality
• The role of creativity in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research
• Positive psychology through art-making

We welcome 250-word proposals from creatives, researchers, and practitioners from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, including visual arts, creative writing, music, dance, drama, psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, and psychiatry.

Kindly fill out the abstract form by May 6. We aim to notify participants of their accepted proposals by May 10.