Art therapy was historically bound to Eurocentric ideologies in congruence with most early psychological theories. Fortunately, in the last ten years, art therapy made substantial strides in transforming to an ethno-relativistic point of view. When working with clients from cultures different than our own, as art therapists, we must approach our clients from a place of cultural humility. It is paramount that we maintain an open curiosity for our client’s identities, beliefs and backgrounds. Additionally, we must gain awareness of our shortcomings as most have ingrained and unavoidable biases. The difficult work of dismantling these biases begins within ourselves. A healthy multicultural therapeutic dialogue is formed by allowing clients to be the expert of their own culture. As therapists, we should encourage the client to share with us what they are comfortable sharing of their cultural practices, beliefs and historical traumas. Additionally, to be of the best service to a diverse client base, as art therapists, we must continue the work of educating ourselves to be multiculturally competent. (Jackson, 2020). 

Below are Awareness Cards  that I created in my Multicultural Awareness class. In the bottom left corner of each card there is a link to a description of the idea behind that card. My goal was to create cards that were attention grabbing and fun to look at that would draw the viewer to investigate their intention. 

Next I included an Adaptive Tool  I created in my Art Therapy Techniques & Materials class, in hopes of making a tool to aid a person in creating art who no longer has use of their arms and hands. 

Finally, I included my Location of Self which describes who I am, who my family are and ancestors were, the land we have inhabited and my intersectional positionality. 

Jackson, L.C. (2020). Cultural humility in art therapy practice. Cultural humility in art therapy.

Intersectional Positionality - Location of Self

My name is Erin Plew Lyles. I am married and benefit from cis-gender female and heterosexual privilege. I am white, English-speaking, benefit from able-bodied privilege and am a descendant of British immigrants. My maternal ancestors immigrated from Northhamptonshire County, England on a ship after taking an oath of allegiance to the Church ofEngland on May 28, 1635. They settled in both Virginia and Maryland. My ancestors were landowners, farmers and some were slave owners.

I was born in 1982 in Elk City, Oklahoma, the land of the Cheyenee Arapaho, Comanche, Wichita, and Kiowa people. My parents were comfortable working-middle class, my father was a carpenter and my mother did not choose to work until middle age, when she went back to school to become a special education teacher. My father eventually got a white-collared job in Nashville, TN, land of the East Cherokee, Shawnee and Yuchi people, where we moved when I was eight years old. My parents are still married.

I grew up in Nashville and went to public schools and graduated with honors, after which I pursued an undergraduate degree at a private college in Nashville called Watkins College of Art, Design & Film. After completing my BFA, I spent the following ten years both working in the film industry and as a commissioned artist.  I have spent time in upper class homes and been somewhat wealth adjacent while not having those sorts of privileges of my own. For graduate school I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, land of the Pueblo and Tewa people, where I currently reside in a lower-middle class while I work part time and pursue my degree, a degree which will position me in a middle-class profession.