ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how studio art therapy functioned in three different settings within a homeless charity: a rolling (outreach) shelter, an accommodation-based project, and a recovery college. The question of how the art process and art product can be therapeutic is reviewed, first, through a consideration of non-verbal ‘dense’ symbolism and the communicative potential of the art process and, second, in exploring how the art product (when viewed as an index of its maker’s agency) can function as a nexus of social relations. The ‘studio’ and what it constituted in each setting is discussed. Session examples show how people affected by homelessness utilised these creative spaces, with all aspects of their presence and use of the art media being valued and worked with as potentially meaningful. The chapter concludes with a consideration of exhibition and explores the social relations that can happen within and around art and their therapeutic potential. Focusing on the quality of how work (and by extension its maker) is seen, it shows that exhibition can give people a new perspective on their individual and shared experiences and through this a renewed sense of self.
