Art Therapy Around the World. Bookmark this page for an eclectic collection of news and stories about the use of visual arts for health, wellness, psychotherapy, community development, service to others, and social transformation throughout the world.

When Trauma Happens, People Draw: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Unforgettable Fire

From The Healing Arts on Psychology Today, August 25, 2008

More than six decades have passed since the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan; this month marked the 63rd anniversary of the events that changed the history of modern war. And the A-Bomb survivors’ drawings and paintings continue to teach us about atrocity, empathy, and ultimately, humanity.

Like many people, I read about the bombings as part of a history or political science class covering WWII. It wasn’t until the first year I worked as an art therapist when I traveled to see an exhibit of drawings and paintings by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I finally began to grasp the impact of these events. Those drawings and paintings forever changed what I thought I knew about trauma and war.

In 1974, 77-year-old Mr. Iwakichi Kobayashi walked into a television station in Japan with a painting of what he recalled about August 6th, 1945. The image was his memory of seeing people burned by the atomic bombed dropped on Hiroshima that day. As a result, the television station decided to put out a call for drawings by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to “draw a picture of the A-Bomb.” What followed was unexpected: More than 2000 drawings and paintings were submitted to the station. Half were sent by mail; the remainder of the images were brought to the station by the survivors, who arrived over the next two years as if on long-awaited pilgrimages. The drawings and paintings were created on the backs of calendars, paper used in sliding doors, and sheets torn from notebooks. The majority of the images included written explanations, often on the pictures themselves.

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When Trauma Happens, Children Draw: Part III

From The Healing Arts on Psychology Today, July 2 , 2008

In China and Myanmar, the innate impulse to communicate through art, play, and imagination is emerging as children begin the long process of recovery. But what about those who don’t want to remember what happened or discuss the terror they have experienced? Some children are so traumatized they may never learn to be children again.

In "When Trauma Happens, Children Draw Part I and Part II," I discussed some of what we know about why creativity can be reparative after traumatic events. In brief, when language is not possible, sensory activities such as drawing, painting, constructing, and playing express emotions and memories when words cannot.

During the last several weeks I have been working with three service agencies in China who are attempting to address the psychological needs of child survivors of the earthquake in Sichuan province. Naturally, relief workers are eager to learn what interventions would be helpful reducing stress reactions and how to use art and play therapy to prevent posttraumatic stress in the future. Living with children in tent cities and makeshift trauma units, professionals and volunteers are dedicated to helping children do what children do—draw, play, and pretend. They are bringing, at the very least, brief respites of normalcy during what are undeniably abnormal and extreme conditions.

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Sangeeta Prasad and Creative Expressions - Say It with Art

Through her book, art therapist Sangeeta Prasad wants parents to realise the role of art in kindling creativity in kids

What do a toddler's scribbles, rangoli, cave art and the Pyramids have in common? The answer is simple - creative self-expression, says U.S.- based art therapist Sangeeta Prasad. "As civilisations, we have always communicated through art," she says. "Indian culture, in particular, is steeped in art, from puja decorations right down to our textiles and clothes."But you wouldn't know it if you looked at the average Indian school. "The walls of classrooms are bare; most of our art teachers don't have an art background and don't know how to bring out a child's creativity," she points out. "Art is an integral part of our lives, but what are we doing to transfer that art to the place where our children spend eight hours a day?"

That is why she has painstakingly put together `Creative Expressions - Say it with Art," an introductory book on art education and art therapy for children based on her 20-plus yearsof experience in the field. "I wanted the average art teacher to know there was all this information and research out there that they could read about," she says earnestly. "And I want parents to understand the importance of art in their child's development." For example, she says, parents often think their toddler is wasting his time when he's scribbling in class - they want to know if he's learning his ABC. "But what they don't realise is that his fine motor and gross motor skills are developing, and he's learning to put down ideas and feelings as they occur," she explains. "Asking a child to go straight to ABCs is like asking him to start forming words directly without babbling first."

"Although art therapy is a very nascent field in India right now, I'm finding that people are starting to use it spontaneously, I hope this book and the case studies covered will give them a little more structure," she says. In an ideal world, the former Stella Maris fine arts student would love to return to Chennai and work with children here. "Unfortunately, I haven't been able to, but hopefully this book will help a lot of people work with a lot more children than I as just one person could," she says. Even better, she hopes to begin Chennai's first formal art therapy programme in the Fine Arts Department of Stella Maris in the near future. Looks like `Creative Expressions' is just the start of this art therapist's crusade for better art education in India.