By Nancy Stillger, Art with Heart Program Coordinator

Smiles from Ben

I was fortunate to spend the morning shadowing Jennifer, an amazing Art Buddy at Swedish Medical Center. Jennifer has been an Art Buddy since 2009. She first attended Art with Heart’s Art Buddy Training and then met Swedish Medical Center’s volunteer requirements to directly work with the children in the pediatric inpatient unit.

On this particular morning Jennifer brought art making activities and joy to hospitalized children ranging in age from 3 to 9.  Kay squealed with delight when Jennifer told her they would be making something to decorate her room.  I saw Ben go from complaining of pain to happiness once he started working on a page from Oodles of Doodles.

Art Buddy Jennifer at Swedish Pediatric Inpatient Unit

Eston found comfort in drawing his favorite taste (but was reminded not to eat it!) and included his drawings of his hospital stay as part of his memory picture in the Oodles of Doodles DK Sheldon’s “Dr. Know It All” page.

Art Buddies can bring joy to hospitalized children that have little decision-making power, change of routine, or sometimes, comfort.  There were smiles all around at Swedish Medical Center this morning – from the nurses to the parents, but especially from the children!

Eston with Artwork

If you are interested in becoming an Art Buddy, Art with Heart’s next Art Buddy Training is scheduled for fall of 2011.  Contact: Nancy@artwithheart.org

Thank you to Emily E. for bringing Chill & Spill with her to Macedonia during her time with the Peace Corps!

Dear Art with Heart,

I just wanted to say that you guys have an amazing vision! Healing kids through the power of creativity is amazing!

My name is Meleah and I am 13 years old. Last summer, I attended [a] summer camp. The counselor, Miss Sarah, notice that I was depressed and gave me a Chill & Spill diary.

At first, I thought it was stupid to think that art could cure me. But to my surprise, it helped a lot to express myself through something I was good at. I felt free and loved and alive!

Later that year, I found out my mother had breast cancer. Late next year, both of my brothers were murdered and my sister left for the army.

My mother is [now] cancer-free, but she is still in a lot of pain. The chemo caused pain in her knee, but I know if I keep doing my art, she will smile, and so will the rest of my family. I believe this because of that [Chill & Spill] diary…because of you!

I am writing this letter to say the two most powerful words I know… THANK YOU.

I can’t believe that the last Art with Heart book, Magnificent Marvelous Me, was released in 2008. It really only seems like yesterday. The time just seems to fly by! During that time, we have received letters from children, caregivers and parents telling us how meaningful it has been for them and how it changed their lives (read our blog archives for some examples). It’s exciting to see the fruits of our mission in action.

Well now…it’s been three whole years…don’t you think it’s time for another book?

I couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly!

One of the exciting things about having an office full of help is that I have finally been able to carve some time out to concentrate on getting the next book out. I’m excited to be co-authoring it with Annie McCall, M.A., LMHC.  Annie has been doing a bang-up job as our Chill & Spill trainer for the past 5+ years. She holds a Masters in Psychology and is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who specializes in helping suicidal teens. Her input has been invaluable (and she’s a kick to be around – bonus!).

The meat of the new book is based on best practices of cognitive behavioral, narrative, and art therapies in order to reach high-risk youth where they are at – reducing the possibility of mental health disorders later in life. Kids who are facing life-changing challenges is who we are aiming the book at.

The new book will be all one color in order to invite the kids to personalize it (we were shocked to discover, through our research, that teens actually like to color!). But when it all comes down to it, the key to this project is what it LOOKS like. That’s where the illustrators step in and make a huge difference.

Screen shot of the first final art by Elise Gravel of Canada

And in order for teens to think it cool enough for them, we’ve hand-selected a band of 20 or so illustrators to participate in this important endeavor.

The names read like a who’s who of the art world – folks known for their work for magazines, museums, theme parks, hip clothing, etc. And while several of them hail from the Pacific Northwest, several of them are from clear across the world: Madrid, England, Germany, Canada. It’s an all-star line up!

The files are due to the printer at the end of this month, so I am furiously working away. My goal is to debut the new book at the Child Life Conference at the end of May.

The illustrators are all hard at work – with sketches and finals coming in every day. It’s exciting to be doing what I love doing – helping kids grow and flourish through the power of their own creativity.

Stay tuned for more news…and then the big reveal!

By Shaun McMichael

This last November, I had the privilege of attending one of Art with Heart’s Intensive Chill & Spill trainings in south Seattle. I knew the two-day training would offer a step by step break down of each activity in Chill & Spill and prompt participants to respond by making art themselves. As a fiction writer and collage dabbler, I was excited to spend two whole days being creative. As a professional who works with at risk youth, I was even more excited to be equipped with another therapeutic tool. At the time I was in need of some inspiration.

A year ago, I’d been hired to teach creating writing to homeless youth interns at our Zine Project where homeless youth 15-22 become paid interns to learn, work and write for eight weeks, sixteen hours a week.  Their work culminates in the creation of a Zine or mini-magazine.

Ziners Group Jan. 2011

With a background in helping troubled kids produce writing, I was well poised for the challenge and in six months, I’d walked fourteen kids successfully through the program. The work produced by youth under my facilitation was receiving accolades from my fellow service providers; and while I too was impressed with the depth and sincerity of expression the youth put into their Zines, part of me felt something was missing.

With a few exceptions, most of my interns had just plucked pics from Google and pasted them in and around their very raw and personal writing. There was something inauthentic and even contrived about the stock photo clips and I began encouraging youth not to use them. Images are key attention grabbers in any publication.

Zine page made by a young author inspired by Chill and Spill Activity

Pictures, paintings, and collages can convey infinite amounts of meaning through depiction of well thought out symbols. In professional publications, images enhance the text being read, rather than distracting from or undermining. I wanted my youth writers to have access to the power of imagery. But I wasn’t an art teacher. I tried to facilitate collage exercises, but I lacked the language or the confidence to push kids to get original with their visuals. Without inspired facilitation, youth merely cut out whole pages of National Geographic, slapped some glue on them and thought that was original enough.

Thankfully, my Chill & Spill trainers Annie and Steffanie breathed some life into my art game.  “What if a kid says they can’t draw?” Annie, the lead trainer, asked at the beginning of the training.  The classroom was quiet. “If they can draw a circle or a straight line, they can draw well enough for our purposes,” she responded. “This isn’t art class”. Chill and Spill encourages kids to draw by freeing them from the confines of realism or performance. The Chill & Spill books are their personal journals; no one else has to look at them. With this license, youth are more likely to explore themselves creatively and discover reoccurring symbols in their own narratives.

Zine page made by a young author inspired by a Chill & Spill Activity

The training, in its breakdown of each Chill & Spill activity, continued to empower me to prompt kids to access their art making sides. The training’s most evocative demonstration involved Chill & Spill activity “Powerful and Powerless”.  The activity asks youth to write a list of things that make them feel powerful; then a list of things that make them feel powerless. Youth are then asked to depict each. Chill & Spill writer Steffanie Lorig, a visual artist in her own right, showed us how to use magazine clippings as make-shift stencils that can create unique and stunning figures, totally original and metaphorically compelling.

I’m happy to say I had the opportunity to put this training into practice the very next day in Zine. It would take another month to fully implement the Chill & Spill activities into my language arts curriculum; but the effort was worth it. The first group of Ziners I tried Chill & Spill with responded and pumped out the most astounding, personal and original collection of Zines I’ve seen yet.

A proud Ziner shows off her mini-magazine.

Chill & Spill’s therapeutic arc provides a structure that was both flexible and focused and can work in any environment that seeks to involve youth in the habit of art making. The material has a resonance to youth of varying ages and artistic ability and is a great invitation for art therapists, teachers, counselors and case managers to prompt kids to create and express.