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"Children from different socio-cultural, religious and national backgrounds work together to co-create art."
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Haiti Healing Arts Launched by International Child Art Foundation
The dramatic TV coverage of the recovery efforts for the 7.0 magnitude earthquake January 12, 2010, in Port-au- Prince, Haiti is over. Instead the news media relates the need for shelter as the rainy season approaches. While the scope of needs for this historically poor, but proud, black population have been barely sorted out, sorely missing from the conversation are the mental health problems for the legions of children— whether they have family, are lost or orphaned after earthquakes—and the measures required to heal them. That’s where the International Child Art Foundation (ICAF) comes in.
According to ICAF, “Research shows that earthquakes increase the rates of mental health problems in the communities they strike. A series of studies conducted one-to-four years after the August 1999 earthquake in Turkey showed that about 40 percent of survivors suffered from post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) and 20 percent from depression. The effectiveness of art therapy in a post-earthquake setting was demonstrated in a study of twenty-five elementary schoolchildren who were victims of the Los Angeles earthquake in 1994. Art therapy services were found to be instrumental in accessing the children’s internal processes and helping them return to normal functioning.”
ICAF’s Healing Arts Program was originally developed as a response to urgent requests from ICAF partner organizations in Sri Lanka, India, and Indonesia to help children who survived the Asian tsunami. Later that year, the program expanded as ICAF volunteers and art therapists reached out to children affected by Hurricane Katrina. The program focuses on creative interventions for victims of natural disasters and aims to help them cope with the traumatic experience. It is estimated that the Healing Arts Programs have helped one thousand child survivors in Sri Lanka and India to recover from the December 2004 tsunami tragedy they experienced. ICAF’s work with young survivors of Hurricane Katrina also attests to the power of art therapy; recent artworks from the “Katrina children” depict their wellness and hope for the future.
With the launch of “The Haiti Healing Arts” in May, ICAF’s Program Coordinator, Chantal Paret Antoine, draws poignantly from her own Haitian roots. Born in 1957, the year Duvalier assumed power, she recalled the haunting brutality of genocide for those aligning with his political opponent. With her mother and sister, she hid for three years in Haiti—her father, in the Dominican Republic. At eight, Chantal, her mother and sister were reunited with her father in New York to begin new lives.
Mrs. Antoine found her way to art. As an architectural planner for the New York Public Library System and having raised two children, she decided on a career change and had enrolled in a Master’s Program at Hofstra University. Noting that her first day of class was to be Sept 11, 2001, she entered her office that morning to find her secretary standing over her workstation listening to the radio after seeing the breaking news. Classes were of course, cancelled. She witnessed the aftermath where among the volunteers and first responders were artists and art therapists. Chantal credits them with transforming Ground Zero, “in addition to a horrific site, an endless urban canvas of art.” As she notes, “that night I became an ‘art therapist’ and never looked back, secure in the fact more now than even then, that art heals.”
With this most recent earthquake, she also witnessed the profound loss felt by the Haitian Diaspora from heavily populated, multicultural Queens, regarding the well-being of those “at home.” Chantal writes about the resilience of the Haitian people despite huge challenges over the last 200 years: the extreme political, economic conditions marked by “poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, rampant disease, deforestation, lack of infrastructure, social, racial and gender inequality, political corruption and unrest.” As she puts the past in context, “this earthquake was something different—a complete disaster.”
Beginning this May, ICAF will train and send groups of art therapists to Port-au- Prince where children with severe cases will be identified for psychological treatment and submit to independent evaluation. The art exchange component will provide schoolchildren in the U.S. an opportunity to view the art of Haiti’s children, who in turn will receive encouragement art from their American counterparts. ICAF’s program partners include the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters (University of Massachusetts, Boston), the International Art Therapy Organization, and BelTiFi (Young Haitian-American Women Empowerment Network). The program will go on throughout 2010 and if funding is secured, there are plans to continue the program beyond this year.
ICAF has succeeded in sparking a nascent global trend. More policy makers and thought leaders talk about nurturing children’s creativity, and empathy is being recognized as a key attribute of successful learners and leaders. ICAF addresses this and fosters collaboration through tools and programs available through its Website including: the Arts Olympiad Lesson Plan to review and forward to your neighborhood elementary school to participate in this free global program; and a sample copy of Child Art magazine on “co-creation + innovation;” subscribe to it or donate a subscription to your neighborhood school or public library.
ICAF has opened doors for arts education in several countries in Africa and the Middle East. Now leaders recognize that for a nation to remain competitive, children must be creative and arts education can help pave the way. For more information about The Haiti Healing Arts program and to help support this effort visit ICAF.
Writer: Susan Trinter, Foggy Bottom News, March 24, 2010
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Connections –
Ashfaq Ishaq, Chairman
International Child Art Foundation
ishaq at icaf dot org
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What can we learn from children and their art?!
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In Our Children’s Shoes: Event Circle Interview with Ashfaq Ishaq, Chairman, International Child Art Foundation by Willi Paul
What can we learn from children and their art?
The vision of the International Child Art Foundation is to create a world that nurtures children’s innate creativity, fosters their intrinsic empathy, and includes children’s voices in any deliberation on the future. ICAF is a pioneer in creating public awareness about children’s creative and empathic development and an effective advocate for the rights of children to be creative and empathic. Towards this end, ICAF organizes the Arts Olympiad globally, hosts the World Children’s Festival every four years, publishes the ChildArt magazine quarterly, launches Peace through Art Programs and Healing Arts Programs occasionally, and arranges art exhibitions internationally.
Neuroscientific research has shown that creative process involves both sides of the brain. New research is furthering an understanding of how creativity and empathy are key attributes of successful learners and leaders. ICAF employs the power of children’s art, both painting and digital, to nurture children’s innate creativity and intrinsic empathy. Interrelationships between art + technology, art + sport, art + science, and art + peace are revealed to develop the whole child for the 21st century.
ICAF is all about elevation of children’s artistic expressions and their voices. ICAF advocates that every contemporary art museum dedicate one room to the living art of children; that at least one percent of available wall space in corporate offices be devoted to children’s art; that every city must be a city of children where their concerns are mobilized and addressed; and that any deliberation on the future – be it a local, national or global platform – include the voices and concerns of children.
As a result of its innovative global programs and dedication to the next generation, ICAF serves as a trusted intermediary between networks of creative professionals and the world of creative children.
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How does International Child Art Foundation reflect your inner Child today?
ICAF is now fourteen years old – energetic in its work, exploratory in its attitude, and explosive in its impact. But it still a little charity that needs nurturing and sustenance. At its birth ICAF was perhaps my inner child. Now it is the inner child of the children we work with and whom we have helped. This organization is meant to be for the next generation. We are only the gardeners.
Do you have insights into how we can teach kids sustainability values?
I don’t like the word ‘teach’ anymore. We can co-create sustainability with children. The future belongs to them and they should protect it. They have to come up with creative ideas earlier generations have not imagined. I see them as leaders. It is not surprising that the environment, sustainability and health are the themes of the opening day of the 3-day World Children’s Festival we host every four years on The National Mall in DC.
What impacts do you see from social networks and smart gear on kids? - Social networks can be informative can inspire. But which one to trust?
- We have learned the importance of shared experiences for children.
- When they meet at the festival and have opportunity to co-learn and co-create, then they can virtually collaborate with each other for the remainder of their lives.
- We also try to introduce smart gear to them at the festival.
Do grandparents still play a vital role in children’s lives?
We have grandmothers bringing their grandchildren to the festival so they can play and learn together and have fun. Such shared experiences get etched into a child’s neurons. Later when the child recalls this experience, she also remembers her grandmother and her guidance and advice. But if children live far away from their grandparents, they cannot benefit from the first hand and familial trans-generational transmission of knowledge.
I must add that grandparents can also have harmful impact if they cannot resist poisoning their grandchildren’s minds with prejudice and baseless beliefs. Our Peace through Art Programs aim to reduce the trans-generational transmission of trauma and hatred.
Describe the new kids symbols and stories from the events you have sponsored?
What we deal with, and what we belief is most powerful, is the art created by children. These works are symbols of childhood in our era. More importantly, these works foretell the imagination of the future.
What children produce at the World Children’s Festival for example are murals. Children from different socio-cultural, religious and national backgrounds work together to co-create art. Our underlying objective is that the art they co-create should be so amazing that each one of them realizes that he or she could never produce it on his or her own. To achieve this objective children must understand each other and develop empathy for each other.
We train them for at least one full day with bonding exercises and other techniques. At their World Festivals the murals that the children have co-created are iconic and truly amazing. These include very large murals (16x24-foot) like the “America Mural” and the “World Mural” as well as smaller 3x4-foot masterpieces.
Is there a strong global mythic base supporting change in the world today?
I think there is a growing awareness, or so I hope. People realize that we don’t only live in an imperfect world, we made it so. Some try to fix it, others despair because they cannot. Our experience working with children over the past 14 years and in nearly100 countries reveals that creativity and empathy may be the keys, not only in raising our consciousness but also our collective ability to address the critical issue we confront today.
The children are the best examples. They are least afraid of change, far less cynical and seldom hypocritical. Change and new opportunities excite them and fuel their imagination. They need direction, but if the adults are themselves lost, the children can become misdirected.
Is Earth Day now a mythic event? How?
We have participated in the Earth Day celebrations which are interesting can be inspirational. In the least it is reaffirming to see hosts of individuals expressing their affection for Mother Earth. But Earth Day is not a mythic event, at least not in Washington, DC. A mythic event is magical like the Burning Man for adults and the World Children’s Festival for families.
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