Janis Timm-Bottos, PhD, ATR-BC, PT

Associate Professor, Art Therapy, Creative Arts Therapies
Provost Fellow for Community Engagement, Fine Arts

Research areas: community arts, art hives, inclusion/exclusion, community-university, community-base, belonging, citizen science, socially committed art practice, handmade, participatory action research, arts-based learning, qualitative methods, women, activism, social change, urban futures, storytelling, ethnocultural diversity, critical disability studies

Contact information

Email:

Janis.Timm-Bottos@concordia.ca

Website:

Art Hives Network

Biography

Associate Professor Janis Timm-Bottos is a board certified art therapist and an interdisciplinary scholar with a sustained research practice investigating the community art studio as a therapeutic site for individual, family and community healing. She is founder of ArtStreet, an art studio with Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless, OFFCenter Community Arts Project, an arts-based public homeplace in downtown Albuquerque and "Kitchen Table Arts," which was housed in a thrift store in Nelson, BC and spawned "Children of the Seams" a youth collective that remakes fashion from discarded clothing. A presenter in both local and international venues, Janis advocates for the return of small, welcoming, free community art spaces located between neighbourhoods. Her current research and training site includes a storefront classroom in St. Henri, "La Ruche d'Art: Community Studio and Science Shop." La Ruche or the art hive is open two days a week for the community to join together to make art. She and her students have launched a national network of art hives across Canada. Please see www.arthives.org. Janis is currently serving as the Provost's Fellow for Community Engagement and is committed to helping lead the university's new strategy: Embrace the City. One outcome of this initiative is to support Concordia's partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Art through facilitating a new downtown art hive at the museum.

Education and training

Ph.D. American Studies, 2005 Dissertation: "The Necessity of Public Home Place in Urban Revitalization" Dept. of American Studies, University of New Mexico
M.A. Art Education/ Art Therapy, 1994 Dept. of Education, University of New Mexico
B.S. Physical Therapy, 1981 University of Maryland School of Medicine
A.A. Allied Health, 1978 Essex Community College, Baltimore MD

Research activities

Researching Methods and Materials for Promoting Social Inclusion Through Public Science in the Art Hives Network: Strengthening Partnerships across Academic and Social Divides

Publications

Selected publications / Works of interest

Timm-Bottos, J. (2015). Art therapy inCanada: A Place-based Métissage. D.Gussak and M. Rosal (Eds.). TheWiley-Blackwell Handbook of Art Therapy. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell Pub.

Timm-Bottos,J. & Reilly, R.C. (2014). Learning in third spaces: Community art studio asstorefront university classroom. American Journal of Community Psychology,55 102-114. Special Issue on Community-Based Arts Initiatives: AdvancingTheory, Research, and Action. C. H. Stein and D. A. Faigin (Eds.) (DOI) 10.1007/s10464-014-9688-5

Timm-Bottos, J., & Reilly, R. C. (2015). Neighborhoodart hives: Engaging communities in teaching and learning. O. Delano-Oriaran, M.Parks, & S. Fondrie (Eds.), Service-learning and civic engagement: Asourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Timm-Bottos, J. (2012). La Ruche d’Art:Community art studios extending art therapies reach. Communique: L’ Association des Art-Therapeutes du Quebec. 20(2)9-12.

Timm-Bottos, J. (2011). The Five and Dime: Developing aCommunity’s Access to Art-based Research. In H.Burt (Ed). Art Therapy andPostmodernism: Creative Healing through a Prism London: Jessica Kingsley.

Timm-Bottos, J. (2011). Endangered Threads:Socially Committed Community Art Action. ArtTherapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association 28 (2).