The Expressive Therapies Continuum was conceptualized by co-creators Lusebrink and Kagin after Lusebrink joined the faculty of the Institute of Expressive Therapies at the University of Louisville, which had been founded by Kagin. Kagin had earned a master’s degree in special education and child psychology while working at a state facility in Kansas that served individuals with developmental and intellectual challenges. The institution received funding to study the adaptive behavior of residents, and this allowed Kagin to investigate their responses to media experiences in art therapy. Her thesis research revealed three discernable agents of change in the artmaking process; these could be therapeutically modified to affect client responses. She called these agents of change “Media Dimension Variables”, which consist of task complexity, task structure, and media properties.
