Healing trauma and building resilience: The role of art therapy in early childhood education

Source: Pexels

Expressive arts such as visual art, drama, music, and creative writing, among others, can be a powerful means of allowing people to express themselves, in the process improving overall wellbeing, improving self-awareness and self-esteem, strengthening relationships, promoting social skills, and reducing anxiety and stress.

The Education Hub, an organisation launched to bridge the gap between research and practice in education, aims to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for children and young people.

It states that art – or what it calls visual arts, such as painting, clay work, sculpture, collage, weaving, construction, photography, wearable art, carving, printing, and ephemera – can be a rich domain through which young children explore and represent their experiences, deepen their working theories, and develop creative thinking.

For pre-literate children, it helps young children express ideas that they may struggle to express verbally, promotes creativity and imagination, and develops critical literacy. It can also help young children process their experiences, positively impacting their overall wellbeing and significantly reduce stress levels.

Addressing childhood trauma

In South Africa, a country where a high proportion of children living in disadvantaged communities have been exposed to some form of childhood trauma, art therapy is becoming an increasingly popular mental health treatment, particularly for traumatised children who lack the verbal capacity or maturity to express their thoughts and emotions.

Research indicates that more than one in five South Africans have been exposed to adverse childhood experiences, including abuse, violence, household dysfunction, and other emotional or physical trauma.

Various studies have revealed the impact of childhood trauma, which impacts brain development and mental health and leads to higher incidences of suicide, alcoholism, and drug addiction in later life. Early intervention is key to helping children successfully navigate traumatic events so they don’t present as bigger issues when they are older.

Therapeutic creative process

Art therapy first emerged as a viable therapy in the 1940s and 1950s based on the idea of making the unconscious conscious, combined with the healing potential of the creative process.

For therapists, the biggest benefit of art therapy is that the actual process of making art can help bypass the verbal centres of the brain, helping them to examine and discuss the thoughts manifested in the artwork physically and visually.

For patients, its most significant benefits are that it engages the physical body in relaxation through the manipulation of art materials, allows the individual to engage in a personalised introspective exercise in which the process and finished product become the symbolic container of traumatic memories, and allows for cognitive reflection.

The American Art Therapy Association says the benefits of art therapy include improved cognitive and sensory-motor functions, better self-esteem and self-awareness, emotional resilience, enhanced social skills, and reduction and resolution of conflicts and distress.

Global impact and healing

Around the world, art therapy has been successfully used for children who have survived disasters including survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the United States, children impacted by 9/11, and girls aged between 5 and 13 who survived the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka. Art therapy is particularly effective when treating children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after sexual abuse.

A 2021 study found that childhood trauma, negative life events, and stigma were associated with numerous mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, disruptive behaviour, anger, and poor self-concept.

There is no question that children who are traumatised are not capable of reaching their full potential, which makes it all the more critical that educational facilities, particularly those situated in disadvantaged communities, have structures in place to address childhood trauma.

Building brighter futures

The Anton Lubowski Educational Trust (ALET) focuses on early childhood development in low socio-economic communities, paying special attention to the connection between school and home and helping to set children up for future success.

ALET’s flagship project is an early childhood development and family centre in the Cape Town township of Philippi, an area that suffers high levels of crime, violence, unemployment, and poverty and where children struggle to access good quality education.

Its vision is to help every child coming through its programme to reach their full potential and live a purposeful life, breaking the cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

Once the physical ALET early childhood development and family centre has been built, in Philippi, this work will be an integral part of the fabric of the centre, which is why the organisation needs to raise capital and start building this space now.

It is currently conducting art therapy workshops with the community as a way of helping children in its care process trauma.

The research that goes into the work that we do also enables us to build a framework for how we can show the impact that these workshops are having on community members.

Creative healing spaces

Once the physical centre is built, it will include a dedicated art space where the children in our care will be encouraged to express themselves without fear of judgement or criticism. Based on the philosophy that all children are innately creative, art activities will be child-led rather than teacher-directed with educators encouraged to focus on the experience rather than on a defined outcome.

Along with the community of Vukuzenzele in Cape Town and the Sp(i)eel Arts Therapy Collective (an NPO specialising in creative, culturally sensitive psychosocial programmes across South Africa), ALET is currently driving a research study that aims to build circles of support around young children, their families, and communities through creative, arts-based and trauma-informed early childhood care and education (ECCE) approaches.

The first workshop, scheduled to take place from Wednesday, 22 January to Friday, 24 January 2025, will include ECCE stakeholders, academic researchers, social and healthcare workers, and will focus on how to advance creative early childhood education with culturally informed, inclusive, arts-based, and healing-centered practices that make provision for indigenous and innate knowledge.

The study will result in a report that will include recommendations for policy changes as well as strategies to integrate arts-based play and storytelling methodologies to heal trauma and foster creativity and resilience among young children and their carers.

If South Africa is to reach its full potential as a country, we need to develop more appropriate models and provide tools and resources for caregivers and educators to better support children’s development sustainably while at the same time providing nurturing learning environments that support their development holistically.