Sea creatures

Children commenting on their model magic sea creatures

Moving like snakes

The past two Bhutanese art therapy groups focused on the movements of a river and the creatures that reside in water.  This is part of a 4-5 group series in which the theme of a river is used to teach children academic skills about geography and more importantly, metaphors for how a river is like life.  In both sessions, children used a scarf to illustrate various movements a river can make:  steady, slow, fast, bumpy and curvy.  Children then mimicked the river’s speed with movements of their own, using all parts of their body, arms, head, legs and entire body movements.  In the prior session, children used model magic to create sea creatures for their river mural.  In the most recent session, children illustrated how their sea creature moved, exploring movements of a slithering snake, swimming fish, hopping like frogs and a crab walk.  Nine children attended the most recent group on April 21st including a brand new student who had never attended before. 

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Four Key ingredients to building resiliency in refugee children

Safe Spaces and Structured boundaries

Spaces for children need to protect them from physical and emotional harm and help them feel safe. Physically safe spaces are spaces that are clean, free of sharp objects and dangerous things. They have room for children to move and play. To keep children physically safe, adults need to set rules of proper behavior and be constantly aware of what is going on in the environment. Physically safe spaces also meet children’s basic needs. Children also need emotionally safe spaces that are child-friendly. Child friendly spaces provide children with a sense of safety, structure, continuity, and support amidst often overwhelming circumstances." These are spaces where children feel free to express their thoughts and ideas without fear of ridicule. Safe spaces for children should uphold peace and gender equity and accept differences of class, caste, and religion. Refugee children often come from refugee camps where life is chaotic, unstable, often unsafe and most dwelling and public places are shared. Creating a safe, nurturing and welcoming environment encourages healthy and holistic child development while the art-making experiences promote emotional, intellectual, physical, social, creative, and spiritual growth.


Children repeat the BuildaBrdge Classroom Model & Rules each group as a ritual

Rituals
What is ritual? A ritual is a series of ceremonial actions that are performed to help transition, heal, believe, and celebrate. Every activity for children should be a ritual with the same structure every day. Rituals are important to helping children feel safe and feel like they belong. Rituals help create emotionally safe, child-friendly spaces. They decrease anxiety and engage the brain and emotions. Rituals help children get ready to learn and make them feel like they are a part of a community. Rituals can also teach history, tradition, and values. Rituals are healing too. For example, singing the same song every morning can be comforting for children because it gives them a sense that life is predictable and that they are a part of a special community.

Originating from chaotic lifestyles like refugee camps or having fled from oppression, refugee children often find their circumstances change daily. They may brush their teeth one day at home and the next have to brush their teeth in a bucket full of shared water with 10 other refugee children in a camp. Their household chores or after school activities could change from one day to the next as their parents frantically try to find stability in a new community. BuildaBridge counters the chaos with rituals and activities that are repeated each group in order assist children in finding personal stability mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally.

Four activities are repeated each group as part of the BuildaBridge Classroom Model: 1) Cross the threshold into the space, 2) Opening ritual dance, 3) Welcome song and 4) Stating the Motto & Rules. The other type of repetitive activities involves activities that are driven by the goals set by the therapists. For example, for four weeks, the therapists may ask the children to do the same movement activity in order to allow children to develop specific skill sets associated with each activity and learn key life lessons. They may also use repeated activities to build up a lesson, first asking children to differentiate between warm and cool colors and the next group, asking them to not only differentiate them but to associate them with feeling words like sad, happy, angry or content. These activities help children define the space and time for the group while also providing familiarity and routine. Children can attend each group confident that the space they are entering is safe, controlled, sacred and predictable.

Enhancing group cohesion and community

The Bhutanese refugees living in South Philadelphia may all live in one neighborhood because of their similar ethnic backgrounds however each household has come from a different community in Bhutan or a different refugee camp in Nepal. Upon arrival, the refugees have similar trauma experiences and the same language however they do not always have familial or communal bonds. The BuildaBridge art therapy groups bring together families from different circumstances, uniting them for common purposes and strengthening the already existing bonds they have to create cohesion. Therapists ask children to share their artwork which in turn, helps other children understand their choices, experiences and similarities. Through the artwork and sharing of it, children identify others who have been through similar circumstances or find others who are handling their new environment in similar ways. A group mural or group dance allows children to feed off of one another’s energies and skills, also teaching them how to work together and ultimately, bring them together for a common purpose just like their families are doing in building community in the neighborhoods of South Philadelphia.


Art as a metaphor for Life Lessons

Metaphors use a familiar concept to represent, symbolize, and teach a new or less familiar idea. Metaphors say things indirectly. They put two things together that are not alike in most ways to show how they are similar in one important way. The art-making process can be a metaphor to describe life and to teach things other than arts skills such as: wisdom, patience, goal-setting, asking for help, and parenting skills. For example, spotting in dance can be a metaphor for trust or for relying on friends and family for support during difficult experiences. For refugees, learning key life lessons or universal values accepted by all cultures, assists them in building personal capacity to function as responsible adults and strengthens their prospects for attaining social, emotional, and economic stability. Therapists use metaphors with refugees both formally and informally. Some group lessons are based entirely on a metaphor such as “Going with the flow in life is like a river because it keeps flowing through different obstacles.” Refugee children responded to this metaphor both artistically and personally, drawing a river mural and the obstacles it encounters in addition to commenting on obstacles they’ve experienced in their own lives. A more informal metaphor developed from a drawing activity. "Maybe we could make something out of this mistake. Sometimes the best pieces of art come out of mistakes that we make into something new.” Therapists then went on to discuss with children how mistakes in their personal lives or at school can often be turned into better opportunities and choices for the future. Using art-making as a metaphor for learning key life skills assists refugee children in developing character, strength and resiliency.

She waived the scarves high and low

Written by Julia A. Crawford
Lead Therapeutic Movement Instructor, Bhutanese


Teaching in tough places sometimes means teaching 50 women who speak various dialects of Swahili (and you don’t) without a translator in the middle of a forest in a war zone. And sometimes it means teaching in South Philadelphia with no electricity.

The thing of it is, if the electrical outlets were working that day, it never would have happened.

I was bringing the Bhutanese group to a close with our closing ritual. The same ritual that we have done together since September, but the outlets weren’t working. I improvised, “Come to a circle. Everyone stomp your feet, we need to make a rhythm because the music won’t play. Add any rhythm to it you would like!” The children immediately held the steady beat in their feet and added flourish with unique half time, double time, and some off time clapping.

I entered the circle with my two scarves as I always do each week. I danced. I passed the scarves to a child, who then entered the circle and did a fantastic knee-lifting jig. The children took their turns, one after another, as always. But something special was happening this week, something profound. We were creating the rhythm for each other, we needed each other, and we were supporting one another fluidly and importantly. We were beginning to enter a “thin space” – a transcendent moment.

As the scarves were being passed from child to child I gestured to the four women who had come early to collect their children to join us in the circle. They shook their heads no as they giggled at my offer, yet they were clapping and supporting us with their contributed rhythm. As the last child ended their improvised dance, he handed the scarves back to me. But the momentum was alive and the children were clapping and laughing and dancing about as they maintained the circle, so I took a risk. I danced over to the eldest woman, the grandmother of a child who comes regularly to our sessions.
I danced to her, she met my eyes with hers, and as I handed her the scarves she took them. She stood up slowly and moved with poise to the center of our circle. The children were ecstatic, jumping out of their skin ecstatic. They supported her with strong rhythms and laughter and beaming smiles. She waived the scarves high and low and held my eyes in hers all the while. I clapped for her with an open heart. My eyes were welling up and so were hers. She finished her dance and pressed the palms of her hands together and bowed her head. I did the same.

She danced the scarves over to another child, this child then danced to another mother, who danced too! This mother passed the scarves to another child, who danced to another mother, who also danced! She then passed the scarves to another child who then danced the scarves over to HIS mother. As he handed her the scarves they began to dance together to the sound of our rhythm.
The children burst into cheering as this came to a close. Their voices speaking the words of the BuildaBridge motto, “I will surround myself with people who want the best for me…” resounded like never before. Dancing together heals and connects us.

I went to the grandmother to say thank you, we don’t speak the same language, but we were communicating. I placed my hands on my heart and with my eyes told her that she had moved me. She placed the palms of her hands together again and bowed her head as she moved closer to me and I did the same. And then she hugged me. I was filled up. It was mutual. We had shared a thin space.

Tony Kuschner’s poem entitled “An Undoing World” reads:
You drift away, you're carried by a stream.
Refugee a wanderer you roam;
You lose your way, so it will come to seem:
No Place in Particular is home.
You glance away, your house has disappeared,
The sweater you've been knitting has unpurled.
You live adrift, and everything you feared
Comes to you in this undoing world.

It may be that children and mothers and grandmothers who are seeking refuge in a new country feel that no place in particular is home as they strive to integrate the values and rituals of the past with survival in the present, but it also may be that home can be felt for a moment in someone’s eyes when you are surrounded by people who want the best for you.

Going with the Flow

“Going with the flow is like a river because it keeps flowing through different obstacles.” 

Therapists used this metaphor in Sunday’s art therapy group to transition children from one lesson to the next.  The last few groups children learned how to turn mistakes on their artwork into something new; the same way one can make a mistake in life and turn it into a new opportunity.  Children understood this lesson as evidenced by their responses, “You can work through it” or “You can change it into something else” and also by their artwork when they weren’t allowed a second piece of paper; rather, asked to use their current piece with mistakes and make it into a new drawing.  Building on this lesson of helping children adapt to the changes in their lives, the therapist introduced the phrase, “Going with the flow” which is like a river that keeps going despite the curves, bumps and hills.   

Art therapist Christine Byma leads a discussion with children about their artwork.

Therapists asked the children to differentiate between a lake and a river, pre-testing the group’s knowledge of the academic subject.  Their responses included, “A river flows and a lake does not” and “a river curves and is not always straight.”  Using a geography book, the therapist then read descriptions of each with accompanying visual images.  Building on previous group lessons of warm and cool colors, children began drawing and coloring a collective mural of a large river using their recently gained knowledge.  Children will add to this mural in the coming weeks as they learn key life, art, social and academic lessons.

Developing Leaders in the Bhutanese community

Children who have experienced trauma and are in tranistion often lack control of their actions, impulsivity and words.  The activities developed for the Bhutanese art therapy groups are all designed to help children gain confidence in their decisions and find focus through those activities.  The therapist's consistent positive regard and encouragement to be independent in addition the safe place for artistic exploration allows children to develop better impulse control.  Julia Crawford, lead therapeutic movement instructor for Bhutanese groups, provides the evidence that the BuildaBridge art therapy groups are truly making a difference in the lives of individual children.  During the most recent group, March 10th, Julia analyzes one child's behavior:

"P. is developing greatly in impulse control and is becoming a leader in the class. He lights up when he is asked to lead. He patiently waits his turn to read the lines of the motto and rules because he knows his turn is coming. He watches the art therapist's eyes intently and when she looks to him he often says, “it’s my turn” and then reads. He is wholeheartedly engaged in painting, often producing more than 3 pieces of art with each project. When he finishes, the art therapist engages him in conversation about his work; it is clear that he has completed the piece the way he planned it. He also often dances with his whole body, doing a repetitive knee lifting jig that uses more of a range of movement than many of the other children use. This appears to encourage others to explore."

Mistakes to Opportunities

Julia Crawford assisting a child with his art project

Sunday's art therapy group with the Bhutanese children taught them a valuable life lesson...even if we make mistakes, we can turn them into other opportunities and better choices for the future.  The lesson began the group prior when a child accidentally smeared black paint on his paper.  The child asked for another piece to re-start his project.  Julia Crawford, lead therapeutic movement instructor, gave the child another paper, yet in the moment, recognized an opportunity to share a life lesson.  "Maybe we could make something out of this mistake. Sometimes the best pieces of art come out of mistakes that we make into something new.”  

Hello, Hello, how do you do?

by Danielle Dembrosky-Bossert

Bhutanese children sing this welcome song at the beginning of each art therapy group held in South Philadelphia twice a month. The song originates from Dr. Vivian Nix-Early's (COO) work as music therapist and is used in many BuildaBridge art therapy groups as a welcome song or ritual.