ART-UP: Making the case for visual thinking strategies in art therapy pedagogy, practice, and research

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is an art-education technique commonly used to enhance observation and critical thinking skills. Since the use of visual imagery is also the foundation of art therapy, integrating VTS in art therapy can foster clinical excellence and cultivate interprofessional collaboration across diverse settings. VTS can support professional learning by helping trainees and practitioners enhance key therapeutic skills such as Acceptance, Reflexivity, Thinking, Understanding, and Presence (ART-UP). This paper presents the authors’ experiences as art therapists, researchers, and educators in utilizing VTS in art therapy teaching, medical research, and museum settings, illustrated through two vignettes. The first vignette describes using VTS in art therapy with burn patients at the bedside to foster art engagement via art viewing and facilitate psychosocial goals during recovery. The second vignette details a museum art therapy program designed for individuals with memory concerns and their care partners. Drawing from these vignettes and published literature, a third section describes the application of VTS to cultivate art therapy trainee’s observation skills, enhance diagnostic assessments, recognize implicit biases, and broaden art therapy intervention to include observation and discussion of art works. Critical reflections are included to discuss the ways in which VTS can build bridges in art therapy. Interprofessional collaborations based on VTS protocol can encourage empathic dialogue when looking at and discovering the meaning of artwork in diverse settings.