Calming Collages

At my art group on Thursday, we made collages. I called this project making "vision boards" because I wanted them to focus on choosing images and words that reflected their dreams, beliefs, and aspirations. I told them that it was ok to use images that they were drawn to even if they didn't know why. The whole point of this exercise was to create something that you relate to as an individual. My advisor recommended that I sort some images and words for them prior to the group meeting so that they would already have some things to choose from and wouldn't have to spend their time looking through all the magazines, so I spent a large portion of my week cutting out parts of magazines, but I actually think that one of the parts that they had the most fun with was searching through the magazines, going on a scavenger hunt for images, words, and phrases that they connected with, although a few of them did choose to use my pre-cut images. I set out about 20 magazines for them to look through and cut out images, scissors, varying colors and sizes of construction paper, glue, as well as paint and glitter in case they wanted to decorate their collages a little more after they glued down everything.

I ran this group meeting a little bit differently from my other meetings. At the end of the session I didn't have them write a reflection or take a mood survey because I wanted them to keep creating without thinking about how this was supposed to be a relaxing activity for them. Instead, I wanted to see how they behaved naturally, and I wrote down some of my observations on their conversations and body language. For one thing, it seemed like the majority of the participants really enjoyed this activity. Most people seemed to be laughing and smiling while they cut out their images and talked with each other. But usually high school students talk about school, homework, and all they have on their plates at the moment, but a lot of the participants were talking to each other about what they were creating and the images they were using. In real art therapy, the client would talk about what they were making and why with the therapist, so I was happy that the kids were doing this on their own with each other, seeing that I was not able to talk to all of them about what they were making. Some of the participants even ended up making multiple collages. Another thing I noticed was the use of art and creating as a distraction. Normally, art therapy is used to confront an issue, but sometimes it can be used to distract a person from a negative aspect of their life, such as stress or worry. I had a few seniors at my group, and I was worried that some of them would not want to create anything because many of them were upset from college rejections that had just come out a few hours prior to the group meeting. They were noticeably upset, but they made a collage despite their sadness, and I think that it helped them a lot. They were distracted from their sadness, and were able to focus on their art instead of their negative emotions.