Sometimes language isn't enough
Creative work can give us another way to explore emotions, memories, relationships, identity, and the world around us. Color, texture, image, movement, and metaphor can help us notice things that may be difficult to articulate. The process of making can also create space for curiosity, reflection, play, or simply being present.
Art doesn't have to produce an answer. Sometimes it simply gives us another way to ask a question.
My Approach
Art can offer a way to express emotions that may be difficult to name or put into words.
Emotional Expression
We might explore color, texture, shape, movement, or imagery to represent an emotion or experience. There doesn't have to be a particular interpretation or a "right" way to create it. The process itself can give an emotion somewhere to go and create space to become curious about what we're experiencing.
Creative work can give us an opportunity to explore an experience through metaphor.
Experimenting with Metaphor & Meaning
A feeling might become a landscape. A relationship might become a color. A difficult experience might take the form of an object, a shape, or an image. Working metaphorically can create some distance from an experience while still allowing us to explore its meaning.
Creative activity can also be a way to slow down and reconnect with the present moment.
Grounding & Regulation
Working with texture, color, repetitive movement, or familiar materials can provide opportunities to focus attention and engage the senses. Sometimes the goal isn't to explore something difficult at all. It may simply be to create a moment of calm, play, focus, or connection.
Process and workflow
Creative work can take many forms in social work. It doesn't have to mean creating a finished piece of art. Sometimes it is about experimenting, noticing, or finding another way to communicate what is happening inside.
"Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human."
-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
“The point is being engaged in creativity, in imagination and that journey itself has value.”
- Maria Rosario Jackson, Phd
“The arts are uniquely suited to help us understand and communicate concepts and emotions by drawing on all our senses and capacity for empathy.”
-World Health Organization
“The arts can heal."
-Christopher Bailey, World Health Organization Arts & Health Lead
“What I would want for people is to not exclude the arts from your sense of what is meaningful, what matters, what it means to be human.”
-Tasha Golden, PhD, arts and public health researchwer
