In addition to pet therapy and music, we also offer arts and crafts as part of our Community Choices Network. While we ensure that this is a fun activity for our service users, we don’t do it simply because it’s fun: there are several therapeutic benefits too.
Broadly speaking, these benefits cover:
- How the person feels about themselves.
- Creating a sense of achievement.
- Developing skills needed in other areas of life.
Improving self-confidence
We support people with a range of learning disabilities and support needs to engage with art therapy so that they don’t face exclusion from the benefits of therapy. Art therapy provides an opportunity for self-expression that might otherwise not be possible. It allows people who may not be able to express themselves verbally an alternative way to communicate their thoughts and feelings. There are fewer restrictions and less pressure when you communicate through art, not least because there is less fear: you can’t get art wrong.
Here are a couple of examples of some recent artwork.
First up, Michael with his completed piece of impressive diamond art. It took a lot of time and he worked really hard on it, but he really enjoyed making it.
Next, we have Josh who created a birthday card for his brother.
You can see in the background of each of these pics that we’re practically overflowing with art, which we love!
Building self-confidence
Being able to achieve offers the individual a tremendous sense of accomplishment, which helps increase self-confidence. Both of these are important to foster and one of the ways we’ve been doing this lately is through flower arranging. Here’s what they looked like when they were finished!
Developing additional skills
Creativity requires problem-solving, which is a skill that people with learning disabilities can find challenging. So, the opportunity to practice this during enjoyable, less stressful creative activities helps develop problem-solving skills that can be used in other areas of life. This works well with learning how to handle emotions and developing social skills.
We need to point out that the look of fear in everyone’s eyes is because they’re worried that Francis, our Senior Administrator, may never give the cake back!
If you think this, or one of our many other activities, would be helpful for someone you know, please get in touch.