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Art is used regularly in the program because it is an unabridged expression of how a child feels. Because art is so personal and imaginative, we do not judge it. Nor do we give prescriptive art activities, which would stifle creativity and discourage independent thinking. Rather, we ask children to create for example a picture of a time they helped someone, or a time they felt sad. Children’s art can show an incredible depth of feeling and compassion.
One of the goals of Roots of Empathy is to develop emotional literacy – to have students understand the names and meanings of emotions and learn how to express them. This is very liberating for children, giving them an opportunity to hear and express negative emotions that tend to get tunneled and suppressed. In the program, we try to validate all emotions, so that children learn that there is value in expressing how you feel – because how you feel is how you are.
Art helps to teach a literacy of feelings or emotions and it gives children a non-threatening way of expressing something intangible. It can be hard for children to put feelings into words, but they can put them into colours and forms.
In terms of empathy, if you ask children to paint a picture about how a child feels to be excluded from a group, every one of them has a scenario. The art can give a concrete record of identifying things that aren’t fair. Subsequent pictures can be about what we can do about that unfairness.
Art give students the experience of imagining what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes, but also the opportunity to take action, through paper and pen. When students become the champion of the underdog in their art, making it happen in their real life becomes far more possible. Passive onlookers of bullying can become active challengers of the bully.
