Art therapy for international happiness and community building
““It can be used as an intervention for trauma, for conflict resolution, community building and restorative justice practices, just to broadly name a few.””
Back in March 2012, members of the UN met for the first conference on Happiness. Since then, March 20th has been deemed International Happiness Day. Each year, the World Happiness Report is released, ranking 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their residents.
When it comes to living in a successful community, we can look to individual and collective happiness as a measure of social progress. When it comes to developing a sense of culture and empowering communities, we can look to art and creativity.
The relationship between art and happiness seems like a no-brainer. Engagement in everyday creative activities has shown to boost feelings of happiness and have a positive effect on psychological processes. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro used cell phone surveys to sample the feelings and actions of 79 adults over the course of a week. In the study, they found that those who reported feelings of happiness were more likely to be doing something creative like playing music, making up recipes, writing or drawing.
Forget engaging in these creative activities, but science shows us that merely viewing art can increase the release of dopamine and activity in the brain’s frontal cortex, all leading to the same feelings of pleasure you get when you’re in love.
I wanted to dive deeper into how art can be used to improve well-being, so I reached out to Toronto art therapist Natasha Sudenis. Natasha is a graduate from the CREATE Institute in Toronto and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Expressive arts Therapy with a minor in Psychology at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. Using an intersectional and anti-oppressive approach to therapy, Natasha has experience working with issues of intimate partner abuse, homelessness, immigration, stress, self-esteem, and trauma.
What is art therapy?
It’s exactly what it sounds like. “Expressive arts therapy is a therapeutic method that engages with a variety of modalities- including art, movement, free play, poetry, creative writing, drama, and music,” Natasha explains. Although there are a wide range of powerful mediums, Natasha emphasizes that art therapy in particular tends to focus on one medium. “It emphasizes the collaborative process and experience of art making rather than the production of something ‘beautiful’…even though it often is!”
The best part is, “you don’t need any previous artistic experience only a willingness to create,” she says. “In this process of art making, we focus on developing a sense of curiosity and dialogue with the images that arise rather than trying to analyze them or pathologize client experience. With the guidance of a trained therapist, people are then able to express themselves more imaginatively, authentically, and spontaneously. These characteristics allow for a deeper understanding and insight into our lives.”
What holds people back from reaping the therapeutic benefits of engaging in art?
“When I introduce the arts to a group or individual, some very common responses are ‘but I’m not an artist’ or ‘I’m no good’ or ‘isn’t this for kids?’. I totally empathize with these sentiments,” she admits. “We carry a lot of messages with us about the creative process from ideas about what a ‘real artist’ might be, or even our childhood experiences. Perhaps we feel threatened by the process because the voice of our inner critic is very loud.”
Renowned philosopher and author Alain de Button suggests that we should rid the notion of “art for art’s sake” because it holds us back from recognizing the therapeutic value of art. Whether you’re walking into an art gallery or creating something yourself, Button highlights that when it comes to art, people get strangely afraid to ask directly what it may be for or about. It’s the reverence and mystique surrounding art that we need to confront and question in order to use it for what it’s really meant for – to bring out our better selves.
As far as your own creative journey, “engaging in the arts might be a new way of communicating for you and should be approached with compassion and sensitivity to the fact that there will be challenges along the way,” Natasha points out. “It is how we work through these challenges that has so much therapeutic benefit. When we can begin to question some of our value systems, thoughts about not ‘being good enough’, or ‘not knowing where to start’, we can uncover resources that are alive within us and improve overall quality of life. In the women’s creative arts groups that I facilitate, themes of fear and judgement are always coming up. We use this information to begin the process of healing by identifying previously hidden thoughts or feelings.”
How can we use art therapy as a tool during socially tumultuous times?
After a terrifying political year, the United States dropped down four places to 18th in ranking in the 2018 World Happiness Report. When faced with socially and politically divisive and disruptive conditions, there are many ways in which art becomes both a coping mechanism and tool to push for change. As a queer intersectional feminist, Natasha highlights that the impact of the creative arts in driving social change is one of the main reasons she chose expressive arts therapy. “It can be used as an intervention for trauma, for conflict resolution, community building and restorative justice practices, just to broadly name a few,” she says. There are so many ways in which storytelling and the creative process can strengthen communities and social ties between groups.
This year’s international happiness report focuses special attention to the relationship between happiness and migration, which is crucial to study considering the last couple years of political shifts and displacement around the world. The role that expressive arts therapy can play in helping newcomers adjust has gained more attention within the last couple decades. “I think that when you have a therapist who is working from a socially and politically sensitive approach, individuals can be responded to more constructively and effectively, that is, issues of internalized trauma can be understood not just as a personal experience but also as a problem within a larger social system,” Natasha says. “The knowledge of this can sometimes be the first step to healing.”
So how exactly does this work?
“One example that comes straight to mind is when I had the opportunity to work with newcomer youth in an arts-based group at Access Alliance which culminated in the annual Peace is Possible Parade in Toronto’s East End,” Natasha tells me. “Young people who came into the group expressed feelings of being overwhelmed by external events and his/her own feelings. When given the opportunity to co-create a vision of ecological, social, and spiritual resilience, however, the art became a catalyst for the youth to see themselves as agents of change and as having collective strength. The group enjoyed the process so much that when the program came to an end they drafted together ideas about an environmental rights group within their community.”
The Takeaways
Humans have been making art to express themselves for longer than history can record, so why not use it strategically to reap therapeutic benefits and boost happiness, all while building and strengthening communities? “I think that art making is a critical coping tool in tumultuous times,” Natasha says. “It helps us to share our stories, to be witnessed, and to be moved to transform our stories into ones of resilience and recovery. Art can give us options when we are in situations that might be tremendously limiting.”
