The Artful Life - Salem State University EXPECT Program

Salem State University EXPECT Program Fall 2017 Nikos Koutsogiannis - Project Manager Josh Sazin - Strategist Stephaniie DeLeon - Creative Director Abby Stewart - Lead Writer

Introduction: Our client was The Artful Life, located at 234 Cabot St., Beverly MA. They are set in the heart of the Beverly Arts District where they have found and personalized a home fitting for their needs and clients. Established five years ago, The Artful Life is co-founded by Natalie Binder and Madelene Pario. These two ladies have extensive experience working with mental health and use their expertise to help clients across the Northshore. The Artful Life uses a developing practice of something that is called Expressive Arts Therapy. In a wider sense, this practice utilizes visual arts, movement, drama, and music to help clients use a creative process to visualize their emotions. This allows the client to have something visual and tangible to relate to when expressing how they feel. Through this technique the therapist can see through metaphors and different themes, what arises in the clients art work and troubleshoot how to help them from these experiences.

The positions that our group held was Nikos Koutsogiannis as Project Manager, Abbey Stewart as Lead Writer, Stephaniie Deleon as Creative Director and Josh Sazin as the strategist for our online goals. We met with our clients on every Friday to discuss our objectives and how we were going to achieve them for the week, and throughout the timeline that we had in the semester. We had a variety of discussions with our client that ranged from consultation on the website, updating brochures, and the flyers they needed us too, and creating a video for them that established who they were in a personal sense for the online community to see and fall in love with like we did.

To achieve these goals and objectives we had weekly group text-messages that were sent out so we could all stay on top of what we needed to, to not only stay up to date on our tasks, but the clients tasks as well.

3. Client goals/objectives: The purpose of this campaign was to increase enrollment, expand on the knowledge of art therapy, and to reach a wider audience for The Artful Life. One of the goals is to help them gain a greater more traffic to their social media page through the use of a video, and also help establish themselves with a personal identity, where people will look at their flyers and brochure and know that it comes from The Artful Life.

Objectives: ● Website Consultation ● Re-Designed & Re-Branded flyers ● Re-Designed & Re-Branded Brochure ● Creation of an informational video of who The Artful Life is. ● Creation of a slideshow video, that demonstrates how Expressive Arts Therapy is used and created.

4. Strategy brief: Our strategy for this project came from a S.W.O.T. Analysis that we conducted as a team when we first met our clients. We looked at the strengths, weakness’, opportunities, and threats that faced our clients whilst we conducted outside research, and measurable goals throughout the semester.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths

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Presenting a variety of therapies and programs

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Accomplished staff

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Family friendly location ● Accessible via the 451 bus route Weaknesses

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Social Media presence

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Lack of awareness about art therapy

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Low enrollment in groups

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Website

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Organizational Opportunities

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Collaborating with local groups (YMCA, Boys and Girls’ Club, etc. ) to spread message

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Personalized video with staff and group attendees

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Aid in a better website design

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More information on arts therapy on the website

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Pitched new stories to local newspapers about the group and art therapy in general Threats

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Misconceptions about art therapy

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Other art therapy business’ in the North Shore

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Groups like the YMCA or Boys and Girls’ Club that offer similar art groups for youth

From this we decided that we needed to hone in on specific portions of their business, so we were not wasting our time or the clients. We wanted to establish a definition of what Expressive Arts Therapy was and develop more of an understanding so we could communicate to the public how it is used and why it was important. To achieve better enrollment in groups we wanted to update the flyers and brochure to have their identity be shown to the surrounding areas and business’. And the video was critical in our strategy so the online community of Facebook, and on their website can have a feel of the environment they can go express themselves, and aid their mental health.

5. Budget:

Every Friday, we met with our clients at the studio, where we discussed the work we had done over the week and what our goals for the next meeting would be, whether it was to make tweaks on a brochure that we designed, or to research social media keywords that they could use to promote business. The group kept in contact throughout the week via a group text message, and also met in person every Wednesday to discuss and continue to work on our goals for the next meeting. Time was spent out of class to work on flyers, brochures and a video that were a very large part of our final product to present to Natalie and Madelene.

We definitely had more aspects that we wanted to explore with The Artful Life, such as their presence on social media sites and how to promote those, but we found there wasn’t enough time to accomplish that. Luckily, early on we realized this, and decided to focus our energy on what was most important to achieve our goals, which we decided were the video, the redesigned flyers, and the redesigned brochure.

6. Creative works list: ● Video - We are The Artful Life ● Redesigned Flyers : Creative Zen and Little Masters ● Redesigned Brochure 7. Creative works collection: Video - We are The Artful Life (available to view in our final presentation) This video was filmed by the team at the end of one of our meetings. We took footage from the street to show the sign and location of The Artful Life, and also took video from around the indoor space - the lobby, the studio, and the offices where individual therapy sessions are

held. Then, we asked Natalie and Madeline to record a short (about a minute) voice memo where they would explain what The Artful Life is and what art therapy means to them. Josh then took these files and edited them together to create the finished product With this video, we hoped to accomplish having a way for information about art therapy and The Artful Life to be spread. We thought that a short video that really showcased Natalie and Madeline’s vision of The Artful Life would be our best choice, because people often don’t want to watch longer videos or read a long article. We did feel a little pressed for time with this video, and originally had ideas to do a series of videos similar to this one - one that might go more into detail about how The Artful Life began, one that might be all about art therapy, or one that might just be about the groups that The Artful Life offers. Despite this, we were still pleased with the final product and were very proud to show it to Natalie and Madeline once it was complete.

Redesigned and Rebranded Flyers

When we first received our client, we began to do research on them to get a better idea of who we were working with. One thing we noticed is that the flyers advertising the groups that The Artful Life offers were not very aesthetically pleasing, and had way too much text on them.

We worried that this would make people not want to read them. Once we met with Natalie and Madelene for the first time, they told us that they wanted to increase membership in the groups

they offered, so we agreed that redesigning the flyers to be easier to read would be a great place to start.

As Creative Director, Stephaniie led much of the creative force behind designing these flyers. For the Creative Zen flyers, Stephaniie had originally designed flyers for each age group that is offered for the program. When we showed this flyer to Natalie and Madeline, we workshopped this flyer with them, and came to an agreement that all the levels should be listed on the flyer, to cut down on printing costs and to save paper. We then brainstormed a new name for this group, Z-Warriors, and decided to call the different age groups “levels”. She also redesigned the flyers for a group called “Little Masters”, which is targeted at younger children, For this one, she included images from previous sessions of the program, so parents could see the kind of activities that happen in the group.

Redesigned Brochure

While we were researching The Artful Life, we also noticed some issues with their informational brochure. The brochure was very text-heavy, and the groups that were advertised in it were only seasonal, meaning they were printing a brand new brochure every time the

programs changed. This could lead to confusion for parents who are looking to sign up their children for a class, so we decided to redesign it so that they only needed to print out one and have it be applicable year-round.

Stephaniie took the reins on this project as well. She redesigned the brochure so that it featured more images and it only said the most important things. She included a simple definition about what art therapy is, information about the different services The Artful Life offers (individual and group counseling, wellness groups, and youth enrichment programs), and helpful contact information so people would have multiple avenues to access The Artful Life for more information.

9. Results/outcomes: One of our main measurable goals for this semester was to help The Artful Life in increasing enrollment in the wellness groups that they offer. Also, we wanted to increase awareness of what art therapy is, and make it more accessible for an audience who may not be that knowledgeable about it. These are objectives that are difficult to measure in the short amount of time we had with our client, so our outcomes are more focused on the work we did that can lead to the measurable goals being complete. Our goal with the video, flyers, and brochure was to create a more condensed version of the information that The Artful Life offered on their website, flyers and brochures, so people did not have to spend a long time reading the website to find out information.

10. Conclusion: Our team is comprised of seniors, so getting thrown into a class with different positions and never having to meet with an actual client was daunting on all of our parts in this. As seniors

it put us in a place the set us up for success, and made us all come together as a group to achieve something that was more than ourselves. Our measurable outcomes that we were able to present to our client came together quite nicely. From the flyers, to our brochure, and especially the two videos that we created incorporated cohesive elements that established The Artful Life’s own identity, which was one of our main goals from the start. Taking the experience of the E.X.P.E.C.T. Program and being able to apply the lessons we learned here to our jobs after we graduate are just one of the takeaways that we will cherish after this experience is over. Natalie and Madelene took into the consideration of our busy schedules and we were able to work with them as a cohesive unit and create something Artful, and learn about the developing practice of Expressive Arts Therapy.