The Arts Help Vulnerable Women and Child Clients Process Trauma

Karen McCluskey

The connection between art and our emotional expression is well-recognized.

The many multifaceted arts therapy programs of the Greater Vancouver Elizabeth Fry Society (EFry), for vulnerable women and children, help clients process trauma and invite new possibilities for healing.

Says Cassandra, a client in EFry’s Rosedale residential addiction recovery program, “It’s really helpful. Addiction makes you lose the ability to connect with yourself. Art helps me be vulnerable and access feelings and emotions that I cannot through counselling.”

Offered twice a week, the arts program includes visual arts such as drawing, painting, and sculpture, together with music, dance, journaling, and meditation.

“We always start with a checkin,” says Catherine Lamb, who leads the Expressive Arts Therapy Program for EFry. “Every woman comes in with such a different experience. Different modes of expression work best at various times. Therapeutic art is not always pretty because you can see the trauma on the page, but it is very effective.”

Cassandra agrees. “I have always liked to draw and paint. Going through this program, my work has changed. I’m more confident now and feel more creative and ready to try different things.”

Offered twice a week, the arts program includes visual arts such as drawing, painting, and sculpture, together with music, dance, journaling, and meditation.

In addition to supporting women of all ages, through its JustKids initiative EFry supports child and youth clients struggling with trauma. JustKids is an umbrella of programs, services, and research projects specifically designed to assist children and youth who have experienced parental addiction, homelessness, or incarceration. Fostering artistic expression is a cornerstone of its Saturday Club Day Camps and Blue Sky Summer Camps for children ages 6 to 17.

During this year’s camps, a particularly impactful exercise for the senior campers (ages 12 to 17) was creating multimedia collages about how the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting them. Youth then wrote about their creations.

“This picture represents what I am,” writes a 13-year-old creator who spends much of her time looking after her siblings. (See opposite page.) • “I feel like a queen for helping my mom.

“Who knew?” is there because

I felt like the virus just came.

“Confident” is there because

I feel that is what I need to be for my siblings to take care of them.

“Heartbreak” is because of what I feel for my mom.

“Sweet,” “Shine,” and

“Still Standing” are words

I am proud of for being.”

All of EFry’s JustKids programming is made possible thanks to its donors. s Karen McCluskey provides communications support for EFry.

“Art helps me be vulnerable and access feelings and emotions that I cannot through counselling.”