Expressive art and it's use for adolescents

Conducting an Expressive Arts Demonstration

The expressive art intervention involves altering or defacing photographs or magazine covers with oil pastels or acrylic paint. While working with the incarcerated juvenile teens, I found they were self-conscious and skeptical about making art: to alleviate the self-consciousness and skepticism and still benefit from the emotional growth and self-discovery realized through expressive art therapy without the need to create an artistic piece (Sharma and Dhawan, 2021). As established, the teens were not confident they had the artistic abilities to engage in expressive art therapy. Still, the objective is not to examine their artistic abilities but to engage them in the expressive process. Defacing pictures and magazine covers eliminates the concern about their abilities and make the process fun, surprising, challenging, and humorous.

The expressive arts therapy approach will involve using pictures or magazine covers to engage in the creative process. The demonstration would involve using paints to alter the complexion or expressively deform the images. For example, an entertainment magazine cover is used to cut out parts of the image, such as the ears, and attach ears from another cover, such as elves’ ears and paint them in green paint (Levy, 2012). The approach used to engage the participants in a more creative process as the objective rather than the outcome of the creative process. The teens’ engagement in a dance lesson is an alternative demonstration of expressive art. Performing basic dance routines and inviting the clients to introduce their modifications is effective for creative expressions.

Inviting the client to participate in a group is also essential to foster self-esteem since how the dances are performed does not matter but the commitment to the dance and the process as a whole does matter (Sharma and Dhawan, 2021). The choice of music needs to be tailored to the nature of the dance routine. The dance environment needs to be painted in vibrant colors. The group participants are restricted to six, and new clients can join the dance routine anytime. Ensuring all participants always put away all forms of distraction, such as phones, is critical to ensure the participants feel safe and alleviate the pressure to be good at any activities.

The process of art therapy is effective while working with teens since it allows them to express thoughts and feeling that they might find difficult to communicate through speech. While some unstructured forms of art are not suitable for teens, the use of organized groups during sessions encourages the team to overcome the difficulties that they might be experiencing in common. Unstructured groups are unsuitable for adolescents since they do not establish order in facing their challenges (Levy, 2012). As teenagers, establishing limits and a structured framework within which the participants are involved is critical as a means of grounding. To ensure the efficiency of the group and the structured approach to expressive art therapy, the individual space and the resources required should be readily available or enough to accommodate the clients’ needs.