As I have mentioned in my previous blogs the art group that I run on Sundays has a social skills segment which is used as a means towards which the girls that attend are able to express themselves to their peers and make relational connections with them. This past week we had the girls create a 3-dimentional model of a person. The guidelines for the sculpture were that it had to be a person with a name and a story to go along with it.
S.E: Remember girls, it must be able to stand, if you have trouble with this let either Andrea of myself know and we will help you.
There was silence at this point and three out of the six girls took some clay and starting molding. After about two minutes of this silence.
S.E: If you can’t think of anything to make then just start playing with the clay and something make develop just by doing that.
At this point there was some murmuring amongst two of the girls but no one else was really interacting with each other. This was to be expected since it was presented as a project to be done on your own and there needed to be a story behind it.
When it came time to present Dina, went first.
Dina: Mine is a boy named Ben, and he ran away from home because he wanted to be a magician and his parents wouldn’t let him. So here he is with his magician hat and a rabbit coming out of the hat. That’s it.
S.E: Wow! That is super creative, thank you for sharing that with us Dina. Esti, would you like to go next?
Esti: I didn’t know what to make, so I made this.
S.E: It’s a doctor, right?
Esti: Yeah
S.E: Does the doctor have a name?
Esti: No
S.E: Is it male or female?
Dina: It’s male.
S.E: Is the Doctor’s name Dr. [Her last name]
There is some chuckling in the group.
S.E: Thank you for sharing that with us Esti, it is very well done. Henny, are you ready to go next?
Henny: No, I’m not finished yet
S.E: How about you Yael?
Yael: Mine is a boy named Shimmy and he is playing ball because it makes him happy.
S.E: Yael, that is some wonderful detail you have going on there. Thank you for telling us about your sculpture.
We had the rest of the girls present their sculptures just as the ones above did and then we all got up and walked around to view each other’s work.
There are two noteworthy things to mention at this point. Yael has not volunteered to speak ever before and with no more prompting than the other girls had she told us about her sculpture in a clear voice without any hesitation. It was shorter than the other girls’ explanation about theirs but this was such a marked difference from the previous weeks that it bears mentioning.
The second noteworthy event was that after this activity there was another increase in how many interactions there were between the girls. The number definitely went up but the truth is that it was mostly between two of the girls and was not evenly distributed among the five that were there this past week.
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Shifra, the project of a 3-D sculpture of a person seems a good choice, but a 3-D self-portrait might be more to the point for a group with a therapeutic goal.
ReplyDeleteArt therapy projects are usually created to maximize self-expressive potential for people who aren't particularly artistic. The evaluation phase might involve a dialogue with the client to draw out symbolic meaning, and also elicit comments from the other group members.
An assignment intended to increase cohesion and interaction within the group might involve collaborative efforts like murals, creating "stars" by passing colored yarn back and forth between group members, and so forth.