Forging collaborative relationships through creative expressive arts therapy as school community intervention

Using the socio-cultural psychology of creativity as a framework, this article aims to describe our attempt to forge a collaborative relationship within a school that caters for learners with mild to moderate cognitive functioning and represents the diverse cultural and ethnic landscape of South Africa. We will demonstrate how a research team from the University of Johannesburg used participatory action research and applied creative expressive arts therapy (CEAT) to allow a shift in paradigm from you' and them' towards us' and we' thereby building bridges of change between teachers, learners, researchers and parents. This article used the principles and paradigms developed by Glaveanu (2010a, 2010c) to contextualise the CEAT process.