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ARTON PROGRAM - The therapeutic power of the group
Creative projects involving group work - general musical performance or group painting, collage, sculpture - are useful in helping to explore and strengthen social...
ARTON PROGRAM - Dolls and masks, portraits and self-portraits
Making dolls and masks allows role-playing games and is one of the favorite topics of children in the ARTON Program. In these sessions, participants are given the opportunity to project emotions, worries and ideas through the dolls they have created. Subsequent play with the created dolls and masks allows you to directly explore the inner feelings and external expression of experiences. The protection of the masks allows you to freely share, express problems that otherwise remain hidden.
Creating different types of portraits and self-images allows children to focus on themselves, on their appearance, body image, on their attitudes. It allows them to gain more insights about their actions, their motives, their relationships with others. During portrait sessions, the feedback from the other participants in the group is extremely valuable, because it reveals countries that have not been noticed so far.
Masks can be made from paper plates, paper envelopes and application paper, and dolls from fabric, felt, bottles, boxes. The therapeutic goals of these sessions are to give children the opportunity to gain a clearer idea of ??themselves according to the doll or mask they have made, to peek at problems from different angles and in a non-intimidating way. To improve communication with each other with the help of role-playing games with ready-made dolls and masks.
In the imaginary space created in these sessions, what is happening is in a surprisingly unpredictable surprise, but it still has its own logic. It is the difference - between an imaginary world and a real one - that expands the range of children's playgrounds. As therapists, our role is to apply methods to connect the two worlds, the two experiences, so that the person can find inner ways to change, clarify, see, understand in order to reduce trauma. In psychotherapy, this kind of bridge is called "interpretation". The method of interpretation used is based on theories in which the fundamental belief is that the alternative experience of the world is important for the process of therapeutic change.
One of the main steps in the art therapeutic process for us turned out to be the recognition, the capture of the alternative experience of the world by the sick child. The art therapists of the ARTON Program pay special attention to the way in which the imaginary and everyday reality interact and influence the experience of the child-patient and how this interaction grows into a change of the “operative reality” (the place where a person is “placed” to functions according to the circumstances of his life). Most therapists believe that it is possible for a person to acquire a different attitude towards everyday life when we have given him the opportunity to understand and accept his logic and imagination with all individual symbolism as a message in order to integrate into everyday life. With practice and experience, we join this attitude.
