Art therapy activities – Powerful art lessons that promote 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…
- by Alice Guile
- Secondary school art teacher
We’ve long recognised the therapeutic benefits of art. People use it to help manage and navigate a wide range of personal difficulties. While only licensed professionals should practise proper art therapy, teachers can still take some inspiration from art therapy techniques and activities and apply them to their classroom practice.
Self-awareness and empathy
My own initial foray into art therapy inspired activities involved designing a scheme of work that combined self-awareness with empathy.
I carried this out with my Y7 and Y8 students. However, 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. This included Henri Matisse’s ‘The Snail’.
We discussed how abstract art is often more about artists expressing what they’ve observed. This is opposed to copying or reproducing what they saw.
I then gave the students a printed sheet showing a series of boxes labelled with specific emotions. I 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. They then had to think about which three emotions they felt most often.
This step encouraged 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 then had to label their drawings and write 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. (I encouraged them not to pick their best friend).
After a class discussion in which we talked about the meaning and importance of empathy and the concept of emotional intelligence, the students proceeded to select three emotions that they thought their partner might feel most often. They 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. This includes talking them through with someone else, or expressing them via art or other creative pursuits, such as music or drama.
What makes a ‘creative person’?
This isn’t the only art therapy and wellbeing-inspired teaching activity I’ve done. In another lesson, I took the unusual step of presenting students with a blank piece of paper and letting them draw whatever they wanted.
This 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. 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.
Throughout, I made it clear to them that the purpose of the lesson wasn’t to create ‘perfect’ artworks, but to generate ideas. As long as they at least tried to express some original thoughts, they would have done the work.
Screwing up the work
My students mostly seemed to enjoy this. However, some did struggle with a lack of ideas and needed some help with suggestions.
At the end of the lesson I encouraged the students to talk about what they’d done. This was met with mixed success.
Some students screwed their work up and described it as ‘no good’ – even when I’d praised it during the lesson.
I’ve since considered the possibility that those students who screwed their work up, or who didn’t want to show what they’d done because they thought it wasn’t all that good, might have struggled with their self-esteem.
However, given how important it can be for teachers to understand which of their students struggle with self-esteem the most, I still found the exercise to have been very helpful.
Among those who did want to show their work, I asked them questions about what they had chosen to draw. I encouraged them to think of positive things they could say about other people’s work.
Uncovering the uncomfortable
In all, I’d say I’m pleased with the results of my attempts to create art therapy activities that promote empathy, emotional intelligence and wellbeing. I’d highly recommend taking inspiration from art therapy for other teachers.
I would, however, caution against using specific therapeutic techniques. My own lesson activities were inspired by art therapy in the broadest sense. This is because art therapy can uncover some painful things.
Art therapists are, after all, licensed professionals trained to deal with clients expressing their most painful memories. Teachers, needless to say, are not.
During a subsequent lesson with some older students about surrealism, Lucien Freud and the subconscious, a member of the class drew something that was so alarming it had to be reported as a safeguarding concern immediately after the lesson concluded.
When working within the space where art meets emotion, you may have to prepare yourself for the possibility that you could uncover some uncomfortable things.
That said, I hope some readers will feel sufficiently inspired to consider trying out some of these ideas in their own classrooms.
Alice Guile is a secondary school art teacher.
