Visual Arts-Based Interventions to Prevent Violence Against Children and Within Schools: A Critical Narrative Review and Perspectives

Violence against children constitutes a global public health emergency, necessitating innovative prevention strategies within the school environment. While the benefits of visual arts on socio-emotional development are well-documented, their specific impact on preventing interpersonal violence remains under-synthesized. This critical narrative review analyzes existing literature (2000–2025) through a corpus of 14 empirical studies (exclusive visual arts interventions and multimodal programs) conducted with children aged 5 to 12. The results reveal a dichotomy: while art-centered interventions demonstrate robust effects on emotional regulation and anger reduction (protective factors), evidence for a direct reduction in violent behaviors primarily stems from large-scale multimodal programs. Although promising as a lever for universal prevention and the facilitation of disclosure, the visual arts require further randomized controlled trials to validate their direct behavioral efficacy. This review proposes an Integrative Mechanisms Model (IMM) to structure future research on visual arts-based violence prevention and advances a renewed evaluative agenda centered on children’s possible selves and future-oriented identity development in the context of violence prevention.