Ambassador #sockmonkey finally arrives at Centre for Young Women’s Development, #SanFrancisco!

Ambassador first visited Twitter headquarters then finally went "home" to CYWD! (Photo by Anna Thorsen)

Ambassador sock monkey was dropped off today to CYWD by Kat’s daughter, Anna!  Kat’s hopes (plans) to run a sock monkey and ETSY workshop there in 2011!   The Center for Young Women’s Development (CYWD) was fundamental in inspiring Kat to work with at-risk youth!

CYWD is one of the first non-profits in the United States run and led entirely by young women. From the beginning, they have organized young women who were the most marginalized in San Francisco — those in the street economies and the juvenile justice system — to design and deliver peer-to-peer education and support… READ MORE

 

 

Youth, Downtown Eastside, beautiful space and sock monkeys #arttherapy #Vancouver

On December 13, 2010, Kat took four students with her to join 6 students at Intersections Media on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in a sock monkey making day as part of Intersections film program.  The sock monkey making day helps relax the students, break the ice, and to develop relationships.  The joy a sock monkey can bring to the creator is quite mind-boggling!  Love it!

Intersections Media Opportunities For Youth is a non-profit society which offers a variety of skills development programs for at-risk youth in the lower mainland who face multiple barriers to employment.

Intersections’ mandate is to transition at-risk youth into continued education and/or sustainable employment, while reinforcing healthy life-style choices and positive life skills.

They provide workshop and project-based programs that focus on film, video, and visual arts as a means of teaching fundamental life and employment skills to participants.

Here are some moments from the day:

 

 

Highlights from our last week before holidays in the AT room! #arttherapy #alternativeschool

Art therapy helps lift our moods, brings us together, facilitates conversation, connects us with the community, connects us with our creativity, celebrates our unique personalities, soaks up the tears and belts out the laughter.

Our sock monkeys at work in Waswanipi with @projetexeko!

Headquarters at Operation Sock Monkey just sent us photos that include some our Operation Sock Monkey Western Division sock monkeys hard at work with Projet Exeko‘s Trickster Effect!

Hey sock monkey makers (e.g. Auntie Lynn), can you recognize your monkey?!

Quote from Projet Exeko:

To summarize, the Trickster Effect offers young people and the elders, and more globally the community, a place for peers to meet, but also a place to express, learn, exchange, and enhance their experiences. This program aims at enabling young people and the elders to express sometimes harsh realities that they live and vitalizing the richness of their culture. Thus, young people are encouraged to develop a feeling of pride and a renewal of their Aboriginal identity, while having a healthy physical activity and developing their creativity.

Objectives:

• Enable young people to live successful situations, to develop their self-confidence and self-esteem, and thus, to help prevent potential dropouts (suicide, psychological distress, and so on) via artistic and physical activities.
• Help secure the cultural identity and to rehabilitate the sense of belonging
• Give the elders psychosocial tools that stimulate intergenerational communication and exchanges
• Help preserve and vitalize Aboriginal cultures and languages
• Enable professional reintegration for several members of the community by training and integrating them to the ongoing process of the program
• Build a long-lasting program by developing independent communities, and promoting their communitarian autonomy.
• Help young people adopt healthy life habits thanks to physical activity and healthy eating habits.

Here is a message from François-Xavier Michaux, co-founder and co-director:

“Please find attached a few pictures of sock monkeys in their trip to the Cree community of Waswanipi.  Our residency with the Trickster Effect program went pretty well both with the youth and the elders.  We had 11 days over there, were so nicely welcomed by the community.  Our opening show has been presented during the international children day.  The program has ended by the kids presenting a play based on a traditional tale in front of the all elementary school. We were so proud of them.  I also have to share that, the first days of the program, some wolves came into the community, schools have been closed 2 days.”

Art therapy and alternative secondary schools matter!

I consider the process of art therapy in an in-house alternative secondary school setting as a process of building a creative family. I found a gem of a book in the parenting section of Indigo a couple of months ago:

The Creative Family- How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections (simple projects and activities for you and your children) by Amanda Blake Soule (2008) Boston, Massachusetts: Trumpeter Books, Shambala Publications, Inc.

At the heart of every mindful and loving family lie the seeds of endless creativity.  With patience, support, and just a bit of guidance, that creativity can flourish and grow in beautiful ways… Fortunately we don’t have to “teach” our children to be creative- inherent in the very core of children’s beings is the embodiment of creativity… When we give our children the space and encouragement to explore their own creativity, they can become our most inspiring artists, our most inquisitive scientists, and our most original philosophers.

Our alternative school is a place for kids with all sorts of needs, issues and backgrounds to explore their creativity in a nurturing, flexible and accepting setting.  We are family.

Here are some thumbnails from Monday and Tuesday this week in AT:

For me, #ArtTherapy is about #facilitation and #allowance…

This week in particular, I was acutely aware of the safe haven that is the art therapy room at our school.