Poster #172 - Collaborative Public Art Projects for Youth Facing Adversity in the Middle East: Building Resilience

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Artolution, an international non-profit organization, specializes in providing youth in communities facing violent conflict, social turmoil, social exclusion, and/or extreme poverty with collaborative workshops, led by professional teaching artists, that yield jointly planned and created works of public art—most often, colorful murals but also percussive instruments and storytelling dance performances. Projects are designed to promote trauma relief, empowerment, and resilience in youth through formation of positive relationships with adult role models and peers (including those of different ethnic backgrounds), exploration of personal and social challenges, and expression of hopes and goals for the future (Masten, 2013). These themes are collaboratively integrated into mural and performance art imagery (Artolution Implementation Guide, 2017). The visual art produced remains on display in the local community as a reminder of the Artolution experience and of youths’ messages related to conflict, displacement, and other themes.

Artolution offers one of the few scalable interventions available for addressing the profound mental health needs of youth suffering from the daily impact of living in conflict zones worldwide (Marshall, Butler, Roche, Cumming, & Taknint, 2016). Typically, an Artolution project lasts 1 to 2 weeks and consists of daily, or near daily, 2- to 4-hour workshop sessions. Throughout, lead artists stress the importance of respect for all community members in choice of artistic images, cultural appropriateness in depicting important social issues, and inclusion of positive elements that focus on overcoming these challenges. Since 2008, hundreds of Artolution projects have been conducted across the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, the Asian Pacific Region, and North America (see www.artolution.org).

This poster presents the first evaluation by an external investigator of Artolution project processes and outcomes, using anthropological fieldwork techniques combined with a mixed-method approach. The first author joined six Middle East Artolution projects as a participant observer in Summer 2018. Three projects—one in Lebanon and two in Jordan—served a total of 105 Syrian youth in refugee camps and local schools. The remaining three projects, conducted in Israel, brought together a total of 130 Israeli Jewish and Arab Palestinian youth and, in addition to trauma relief, addressed issues of ethnic reconciliation (Figures 1 and 2). Except for Israeli Jewish youth, all project participants were ethnic minorities in their host communities; most were suffering from social exclusion as well as poverty and high uncertainty about their futures.

Methodology consisted of in-depth observations of workshop sessions, followed by post-project focus groups and interviews with individual participants. Results address: (1) behavioral changes visible over the course of daily workshops, including learning, skill-building, and formation of new relationships; (2) youth-expressed transformations in self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and sense of optimism about the future; and (3) benefits of Artolution projects for the surrounding community.

Findings illustrate the power of collaborative artistic expression, guided by art educators, to clarify what traumatized youth suffer from, along with their evolving thoughts and feelings about themselves, their future, and their community. Also addressed are methodological challenges of conducting fieldwork on short-term interventions in refugee camps and post-conflict areas, including navigating the thin line between investigator impartiality and project involvement.

Authors

• Lisa Barthelmes, Ph.D., Max Planck Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology
  Presenting Author

• Laura E Berk, Illinois State University
  Non-Presenting Author