Teach Secondary Issue 14.8

The art of WELLBEING It’s possible – albeit while exercising caution – to take inspiration from art therapy and create powerful art lessons that promote wellbeing, writes Alice Guile O ur young people are under more pressure than ever before. According to the youthmental health charity YoungMinds, 1 in 6 children aged 5 to 16 were identified as having a probable mental health problem in July 2021 – a huge increase from 1 in 9 back in 2017. That amounts to an average of five children having a probable mental health problem in every classroom. Such a steep increase over just four years can be in part attributed to the COVID 19 pandemic – but whatever the causes, it’s become evident that many students are struggling with their mental health, which in turn puts extra pressure on education staff. Self-awareness and empathy Art has long been recognised for its therapeutic benefits, and has often been used to help individuals manage and navigate a wide range of personal difficulties. Whilst proper art therapy should only ever be practised by licenced professionals, teachers can still take some inspiration from art therapy techniques and apply them to their classroom practice. My own initial foray into art therapy-inspired lesson planning involved designing a scheme of work that combined self-awareness with empathy. I carried this out withmy Y7 and Y8 students, but it’s simple enough to potentially do with primary school children as well. We began by looking at examples of abstract art via a PowerPoint presentation, including Henri Matisse’s ‘The Snail’, and discussed how abstract art is often more about artists expressing what they’ve observed, rather than copying or reproducing what they’ve observed. I then gave the students a printed sheet showing a series of boxes, each labelled with a specific emotion, and asked them to use what they understood of abstract art to create an image depicting each emotion. The activity was accompanied by some background music – a selection of classical pieces I’d chosen beforehand that were evocative of the different emotions the students were exploring. I periodically asked the students how the music made them feel, and what colours the music made them think of. (We engaged in some brief guided meditation during the first and last few minutes of the lessons, to encourage calmness.) Next, I asked the students to draw an outline of their own body on a separate piece of paper, and think about which three emotions they felt most often. This step was designed to encourage self- awareness and self- reflection, both of which are hugely important to the mindfulness process. ‘Emotion self-portraits’ When promoting wellbeing, it’s important that students are able to recognise and express what they’re feeling. I therefore made a point of asking the students to all reflect on why they might feel those particular emotions more than any others. Inside the body outline, I asked the students to depict – again, using their understanding of abstract art – their three most common emotions. They were then tasked with labelling their drawings and writing about why they picked those particular emotions at the bottom of the page. As they did so, I walked around the classroom, encouraging some individual students to discuss the emotions they had chosen and why. This process led to some interesting conversations. It can be helpful for students to be open about their feelings, and to internalise the idea that it’s good to talk about emotions. I described the pictures as ‘emotion self- portraits’. The next stage was for the students to pick another person and create an emotion portrait of them (while being encouraged to not pick their best friend). After a class discussion in which we talked about the meaning and importance of empathy, and the concept of emotional “The purpose of the lessonwasn’t to create ‘perfect’artworks,but togenerate ideas” intelligence, the students proceeded to select three emotions that they thought their partner might feel most often, and drew those inside of a body outline. As before, they were required to write notes about why the other person might feel those things. At the end of the lesson we talked more about why it was important for us deal with strong feelings in healthy ways – such as talking them through with someone else, or expressing them via art or other creative pursuits, such as music or drama. Whatmakes a ‘creative person’? This isn’t the only art therapy and wellbeing-inspired teaching I’ve done. In another lesson, I took the unusual step of presenting students with a blank piece of paper and letting them drawwhatever they wanted. This admittedly followed a group discussion we’d had at the start of the lesson, in which we talked about what it is that makes a ‘creative person’. Sadly, none of the students present were willing to describe themselves as such – so we tried to get to the bottom of why that was. Their responses mainly revolved around them thinking that their ideas weren’t of any value. The lack of confidence they displayed was astounding to me, and disappointing. I told them that they could spend the remainder of the lesson drawing whatever they wanted to because their ideas were of value – and because I was keen to see what was inside their heads. 52 teachwire.net/secondary