Our Lockdown Responses
Healing Art Kits
To date, we have sourced, packaged and distributed healing art kits to 4407 children across the Western Cape through our Community Art Facilitator Network.
School closure and lockdown of several weeks mean that children are trapped in crowded, under-resourced households not allowed to leave their yards facing challenges and trauma. Doing art during lockdown takes the stress out of tense family situations. Drawing and painting allow children the time to express themselves, especially when they can’t verbalise their fears. It balances their thinking, feeling and willing, that strengthens their life forces which builds one’s immune system. Doing art brings relief.
Our crowdfunding campaign continues as we pursue to distribute to more communities.
Lockdown Tutorial Art Videos
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and South Africa adhering to the current lockdown, the Butterfly Art Project, our Community Art Facilitators and the children we serve are still keeping active and promoting healthy practices while at home and support each other through action.
Everyone can now participate in healing art activity through the BAP-produced demonstration videos where one can learn how to create a mandala artwork or a group of humans in clay. These activities build the participants inner stability and harmony, especially during unstable and uncertain times.
Training Webinars
The Training and Mentoring team redesigned training modules into online webinars in order for Community Art Facilitators to gain an understanding of the value of creative development and continue training to grow art therapeutic skills.
These short, sharp training sessions during lockdown are introductory capacity building, working towards more intensive training on the same topics in the future.
We have also digitised our Weekly Artist Hubs and Child Case Study Hubs. Artist Hubs run on Saturday mornings 10:00 am - 12:00 pm via Zoom. Child Case Study Hubs run on Thursdays 11:00 am - 12:30 pm via Zoom. Zoom details shared directly into our Community Art Facilitator Networks.
Online Resources & Art Project Designs
During 2019, BAP launched an online handbook called How to Start a Community Art Centre. This book gives Community Art Facilitators (or anyone else in the world) needed theoretical and practical information for starting a formal art initiative in a SA community.
At BAP, we also continue providing online lesson plans and resources for others to adapt and use in their own spaces. A great way to keep practising the healing arts remotely!
Heart for Art Parent Engagements
The Heart for Art team continues to engage with parents and guardians of children we work with at our Art Centre in Vrygrond. Home visits and telephone calls to check in with them and the children in the household continue. To date over 150 home visits were completed, checking the children's stability through simple questions and gathering information on their pressing needs still continue. BAP has supported their children by distributing additional art kits, providing food when available, share information on how to safely practise social distancing and provided access to masks.
My Monster Project
This is BAP’s art campaign for the 2020. My Monster art activities contribute towards building courage in children; to help them find creative ways of dealing with the monsters they face in everyday life. While facing these monsters together with the children, CAFs aim to invoke a sense of purpose in the lives of the children. This theme also looks at hope for the future. The team has created a dynamic CAF training opportunity with many projects suggestions that would facilitate their child beneficiaries dealing with their monsters.
