Last Art Group!

On Thursday I had my last art group at BASIS, which was really sad because I had so many more projects that I would have liked to do with the group! But for my last project, I decided to make candle holders with them. It's the end of the year, and everyone is stressed, so I wanted to do something that would not only relax them while they were making it, but that they could also use in the future to destress, and in my opinion candlelight and the smell of candles has a powerful calming effect.

We made our candle holders using recycled jars, teared up strips of tissue paper, and Modge Podge, which is a decoupage glue that dries clear. To make the collage effect, we dipped the strips of tissue paper in the glue and pasted them onto the jar, overlapping pieces.

This meeting was the smallest group. There were only seven kids there, which was nice because I was able to sit with them and talk to them about how school is going, how they're feeling about the end of the year and finals, and how they are feeling about next year. The general feeling in the room was that everyone was very stressed about the fast approaching AP exams that they have. The stress of tests and studying was probably why so few people were there. It stinks that a lot of people think that they don't have time for art, even though just taking a short amount of time to create something could help them destress. In a study from 2016 on the relationship between cortisol levels and art making, researchers found that just 45 minutes of creating art statistically reduced levels of cortisol (the stress hormone)! Check out the full study at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5004743. It may initially feel stressful taking time out of your busy schedule for art, but in the end it could be really beneficial to you.

At the end of the group, I gave everyone that was there another stress assessment to take so that I can compare their stress levels from before and after they joined the art group. Of course, since they are taking the end stress assessments now, the results may not reflect accurately the affect that creating art had on their stress because of the extreme possibility that their stress levels are high right now due to final exams. I will also need to reach out to the kids that were not at Thursday's group so that I can have them also take the stress assessment.