Protested Space: artworks made in a therapeutic art studio in a time of cuts

Art has a rich history as an agent of protest. This chapter will consider how artworks, made in a therapeutic art studio, were radical acts of protest for the group. Some of these artworks were made in response to the partial closure of the service due to austerity driven funding cuts, and others to a sense of wider political and social injustice. In the chapter I examine the tension I felt as an art therapist, between an initial wish to protect and shield the group from knowing the truth about the financial pressures (a ‘protected space’), and a desire to go with the potential for empowerment that knowing the worst and becoming part of a joined-up community response, might provide. The studio became a ‘protested space’ in which art was an active agent. Viewed like this the art illuminates the hierarchical tensions within the therapy space during this time of crisis, where the more radical community-based ethos of the studio seemed under threat of erosion by powerful social, economic and political forces and felt difficult to maintain. The art can be seen as having meaning for the group in powerfully giving form to this ethos