A GROUP of pupils from CM Vellem Primary School recently participated in art therapy sessions organised by the Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture in the Cacadu district.
The department’s manager of cultural affairs, Lennox Xalabile, said the programme, a partnership between his department and the school, targeted pupils with learning problems. He said art therapy was a way for children with learning disabilities, behavioural disorders or emotional disturbances to express and defuse
their feelings of anger and helplessness. “Art therapy can provide children with an easier way of expressing themselves in a free and unintimidating environment,” he said.
A GROUP of pupils from CM Vellem Primary School recently participated in art therapy sessions organised by the Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture in the Cacadu district.
The department’s manager of cultural affairs, Lennox Xalabile, said the programme, a partnership between his department and the school, targeted pupils with learning problems. He said art therapy was a way for children with learning disabilities, behavioural disorders or emotional disturbances to express and defuse
their feelings of anger and helplessness. “Art therapy can provide children with an easier way of expressing themselves in a free and unintimidating environment,” he said.
The sessions were held at Dakawa Art Centre, where pupils were taught how to work with various materials – crayons, markers, paint and paper – by local artist Nkululeko Mpongoshe. In the second phase, Xola Mali taught them how to take photographs.
Then, during a visit to Rhodes University's journalism department, pupils were taken into a television studio, and were taught multi-camera operation skills for television purposes.
Xalabile said this was a pilot project and his department was planning to develop the project in partnership the departments of social development, and education, as well as business. The school’s principal, Nontombi Mene-Mpahlwa, welcomed the initiative. “Our kids have enjoyed it immensely, and we have seen good changes in their behaviour. They are able to express themselves in the classroom now that they have attended the sessions,” she said.
Grade 7 pupil, Zizipho Silanda, said she'd enjoyed it very much. “Now I know how to take pictures, and we went conducting interviews while others were recording. I enjoyed it very much,” she said. According to the website of the US-based National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapies Associations, art therapy was founded in the 1940s and 1950s by educator and pyschotherapist Margaret Naumburg, in New York, and spread to in England. Today it is used as an effective treatment for the developmentally, medically, educationally, socially, or psychologically impaired, and is practised in mental health, rehabilitation, medical, educational, and forensic institutions.
