THE 2010 ARTS FOR PEACE WORKSHOP: THE 'BAKWIT' EXPERIENCE
PEACE TILES IN A MOUNTED COLLAGE
OCTOBER 2-26, 2010
SARANGANI, MAGUINDANAO, LANAO DEL SUR, NORTH COTABATO
Our main objective is to engage both children and adults in refugee communities in visual arts as a creative form drawn from their own creativity. These activities provide local peace advocate institutions with tools to help refugee communities recover from the trauma, terror and dislocation of war.
Art making among the refugees helps rebuild individual and community identity.
We see fear and hopelessness in the faces of children and adults who had had their childhoods and personal lives stolen away. But every child or adult loves to sing and dance, to play and feel free. It is hoped that, by finding their childhood or personality through their unique ethnic expression, these children or adults could become more than lost refugees. Their cultural expression creates purpose where there is little or no hope of getting out of the camps and returning home.
Long after international relief organizations have provided food, clothing, shelter, medical care and sanitation, hapless refugees so often languish in camps that are little more than human warehouses. Once basic relief is provided, the refugees need help to create and maintain their sense of community, and to prepare them to get on with their lives in a strange locale or community. Here art-making , based or reflected on the refugees’ own indigenous arts, helps them to re-establish intergenerational relationships rooted in their own culture, and thus giving them the impetus and tools to rebuild their communities.
The use of art is the product of the belief in its empowering value, especially in an atmosphere where there is a clear lack of a healthy and nurturing environment for the children of the camps. The strongest realization is the power of art and expression through it. The children who used various means, be it theater, literature or art, to create a dimension for themselves, a sort of ‘safe space’ where they may comfortably express the realities they live in.
This workshop will also facilitate the process of sharing of experiences by encouraging collaborative reflection by way of inter-community artistic exchanges and documentation of experiences.
Art workshops are known to be helpful to relieve traumas and traumatic experiences because it helped to gain their emotional balance through art therapy.
Suzanne Silverstein, a registered art therapist, says art therapy is one element that uses group discussion to address emotional anxieties and the main goal is to give the victims a place to go to express their fears and anxieties.
“Psychological trauma of any kind affects a child’s ability to concentrate and learn,” said Silverstein, president and co-founder of the Psychological Trauma Center. By helping children begin to cope with the violence, fear and sadness that are all too prevalent in their homes and neighborhoods, we hope to improve their quality of life and help them achieve their highest learning potential. We also hope to help break the cycle of violence as students learn healthy forms of expression and avoid striking back with more acts of violence.”
Refugee children are frequently exposed to prolonged or multiple traumas. It is rarely the case that they encounter only a single traumatic incidence. This has been extensively documented through the literature. (Macksound et al, 1993; Richman, 1993; Yold, 1998 Amnesty International, 1998 and Refugee Health Policy Advisory Committee, (RHPAC 1997) It is common for refugee children to experience the violent death of one or both parents, witness the massacre or casualties of friends and close relatives, go through the experience of forced separation and displacement or suffer extreme poverty, starvation, physical injuries and disabilities. Often children are exposed to direct combat; they may be kidnapped, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, sexually abused or forced to participate in violent acts (Macksoud ET al,
1993).
Many male supporters of the family are killed in the war, imprisoned or forced to participate in combat. Consequently many refugee families lose the male head of their family. This leaves refugee children, particularly boys, to lose their childhood prematurely as they take up the responsibilities of their fathers. They become the breadwinners of the family, protectors of their younger siblings and are actively involved in finding food or shelter for their remaining family.
Art making can be both art and therapy. It is the use of drawing, painting, and sculpture in therapy to help someone get to those inner feelings. However, session outputs are conducted by artists whose primary goal for the art lessons is that the process of creating is stressed over the finished product. Developing artistic skills is not the goal and a person need not have artistic abilities to benefit from art making.
Art is used as a meeting ground of inner and outer worlds. It can be a means to reconcile conflicts or foster awareness and personal growth. We have all experienced times when words just get in the way, or inadequately express what we are feeling. Moving away from verbal expression toward a graphic representation of we’re experiencing often yields surprising results and insights to our internal state. It is not unusual for unresolved needs or forgotten memories to surface spontaneously in the images produced.
Creating art may also help someone relax and build a better rapport with others. People are often anxious about what to say. Drawing, however, is often less threatening than verbal self -disclosure.
The Real Meaning Of Peace
Author Unknown
There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all the pictures. But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them.
One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace.
The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.
But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest - in perfect peace.
Which picture do you think won the prize? The king chose the second picture. Do you know why?
"Because," explained the king, "peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace."
