This past week-end I enjoyed spending time with art therapy graduate students and faculty at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as part of their 2012 Fall Conference. It was a great couple of days featuring two of my passions in art therapy: an evening presentation about my interest in community organizing through social media and online art collaborations, as well as an all day workshop about my clinical work with youth survivors of domestic violence.
Saturday’s workshop included art-making time focused on creating paper houses as a way to explore and introduce themes related to finding safety through art. It was exciting to see the different houses, environments, and additions students made from the variety of awesome materials provided.
Even more exciting was when we brought our individual houses together to create our own safe village full of creative and vibrant energy (!) :
Houses come together to create a vibrant & creative village!
If you’re interested in learning more about this art intervention and the steps involved to make your own paper house (or village!), my download on SlideShare about Paper House Making with Youth Exposed to Domestic Violence can be accessed here:
Thank you to SIUE’s Student Art Therapy Association and faculty for a great conference and visit!
October 3, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Thank you for your blog and for sharing your wisdom. It is indeed inspiring. I continually look forward to the latest entry showing up in my inbox. Love this intervention; the village is wonderful.
October 5, 2012 at 10:13 am
Gretchen–I like how you took your work with survivors of domestic violence (the exhibit in your previous post) and extended it to educating other professionals about domestic violence. A powerful and inspiring sowing of seeds! I would like to try using the paper house in the hospital context, so I’ll play with it and see what directions it could take for illness, trauma and grief. I think your words “finding safety through art” applies to just about every context.
February 6, 2013 at 10:20 am
[...] Reflecting on Fall Conference [...]