Happy Art, Happy Group

This week I had the second meeting of my art group at BASIS, and I chose to do an exercise on happiness. I began the group by having them grab a blank piece of paper and one or two markers. Then I had them write with the markers at the top of their paper "I am happy when..." They spent about the next ten minutes trying to write at least ten things that make them happy. I can't tell you how many times I heard group members say something like, "This is hard. I can only think of three things." But they did it! And after a little encouragement most of them were able to write down their ten things. Then, we did the art portion of this exercise. I had set out colored pencils, markers, water color paint, water color paper, and more blank paper, and told them to create a picture or drawing of what makes them happy, using their lists they just made for inspiration. I told them that they could be as detailed or as simplistic, and as realistic or as abstract as they wanted, and gave them the next 40 minutes or so to create freely. It was interesting because almost the entire group decided to paint with water colors, and I had just read a chapter in one of my books about materials and media saying that many clients shy away from water colors because it is hard to control. I guess that's teenagers for you...very adventurous!

Last week I talked to my advisor, Kylin, about ways that I could improve my group, and she brought up the importance of rituals. She gave me the idea of doing a simple check in with the group at the beginning and end of the session to give the group structure. This week, since the theme was happiness, I had the participants to a quick mood survey before they wrote their lists and painted, and the same one at the end after they created their art. The survey was a slip pf paper with five smiley faces on them, ranging from very happy to very sad, and they circled what their mood was, wrote "beginning" on the first one and "end" on the second one, stapled the two together, and then gave them to me so I could compare their moods after having finished their happiness projects. The surveys of fifteen participants showed that their moods improved after the session, and six showed that their moods stayed the same. At least no one felt worse after the group!

All in all I thought this group session went a lot better than the last. The participants seemed to be less frustrated, and we were definitely less pressed for time. I played bamboo flute music for them, and only had half of the room's lights on, so the atmosphere seemed a bit more relaxing. Plus, I made sure to save time at the end of the group for cleanup so that all the responsibility of cleaning everything up didn't fall to me. I am feeling a lot more confident about the groups, and I even had some participants thank me when we were done, and that made me feel really good. Maybe not all of the participants were happy after the group, but I was definitely happy!