BIG IDEAS at CIIS with Danielle Drake: Social Change Through Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts Therapy involves engaging clients in creative writing, poetry, music, and a variety of visual arts processes. Did you know this approach can expand to entire communities in need of healing and social change? In this talk, Danielle Drake shares her perspective on the impact of Expressive Arts in cultural engagements leading to social change. Her experiences are highlighted by spoken word poetry and stories of development as an African American woman connecting to the larger whole through engaging in creativity as an ongoing and necessary liberatory act.
Danielle Drake, MA/MS is a graduate of the CIIS Masters of Counseling Psychology, Expressive Arts Therapy program and now serves as Core Faculty/Assistant Professor in the program. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology at Fielding Graduate University.  Danielle most recently contributed to the American Psychological Association publication, "Womanist and Mujerista Psychologies: Voices of Fire, Acts of Courage." Her co-authored chapter titled "Womanism, Creativity and Resistance: Making a Way Out of No Way" demonstrates the efficacy of using creativity and a Black Feminist (Womanist) framework to assist African-American women in therapy.  Her work as an Expressive Arts Therapist engages clients in creative writing, poetry, music, and visual arts processes.  She uses a humanistic and narrative informed theoretical approach that incorporates African, womanist, indigenous, and liberation psychologies with Emotion Focused Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and contemplative practices.