LAUSR

This article outlines the value of Deleuze’s philosophy to social work in offering a different understanding of the constitution of reality and being human and the importance of the visual by way of artistic and craft activities. The key concepts derived from Deleuze’s work and outlined in the article concern the idea of the ‘virtual’ as relevant to the concept of ‘a life’ and ‘difference and repetition’ as a way of conceptualising an anti-essentialist post-modern view of identity as fragmented, but dynamic. In other words partaking of chaotic, but also creative potential. This conceptualisation of life allows to think about all lives, even ‘difficult’ ones, as potentially creatively undetermined in the future, rather than just pathologically predetermined by the past. Arts and crafts are seen as having the power to provoke and soothe, allowing a process of discovery of what the material and the person might both become in the doing. Thus, the article offers an ontological grounding validating arts and crafts, experiential learning and apprenticeship models as essential to social work practice and training at a time when these might be driven out by evidence-based paradigms and budget cuts.