School of Creative
Industries
Tay Hongcheng
Reflecting on his own journey with mental health and well-being, Hongcheng's passion for storytelling, his experience in play-based volunteer roles, art-based research and his degree in digital filmmaking allowed him to utilise collaborative play, storytelling and visual arts to broaden his understanding of the intersection(s) between art, play and disability.
During his time in the MA Art Therapy programme, Hongcheng provided therapeutic services to adults on the autism spectrum at a day activity centre and to neurodivergent children at a mainstream primary school.
Hongcheng hopes to continue practising a collaborative neurodiversity-affirming approach to art therapy that values individual client perspectives which nurture them through their strengths. He intends to advocate for a humanistic and compassionate understanding of our invisible differences, empowering inclusivity among homogeneity through his future practice.
Work
Wandering/Wondering about Chaos
Interactive installation
40 x 44 x 15 cm
2024
Wandering/Wondering about Chaos is an interactive artwork disguised as a board game. It is a reflexive and playful exploration of the artist’s art therapy training journey. The work uses bright and colourful materials to reframe profoundly personal, visceral and reflective moments in training.
Viewers/players of the artwork/game are invited to witness his process and journey by synthesising and/or wondering about photos of his response artworks and words he has heard from others or said to himself to create choices they can take on their own or with other viewers or players to traverse the fun-looking yet chaotic and ambiguous board or experience with token(s).
The entire process also alludes to and satirises art-based research. The findings from his experience training as an art therapist are presented in this interactive artwork.
Thesis abstract
Same Same, But Different: A self-reflexive qualitative inquiry of a neurodiversity-affirming art therapy practice in a mainstream school in Singapore
This thesis is a practitioner-based qualitative inquiry introducing a neurodiversity-affirming approach to art therapy with neurodivergent preadolescent boys in a mainstream primary school by reflecting on my lived experience as a neurodivergent art therapist trainee. It aims to develop an ecosystem where my personal and professional experiences clinically inform one another through a psychodynamic psychotherapy lens further enriched by a neurodiversity-affirming framework sensitive to developmental and sociocultural influences.
The study advocates for a strength-based, self-reflexive and humanistic approach to explore the intersubjective experiences of neurodiversity through multiple-case vignettes and my response artworks as clinical material. The findings suggest that acceptance and integration of the art therapist's self nurtured professional development directly impacted the therapeutic growth of participants by creating space for them to acknowledge and embrace their differences.