Collaborative Dream Catcher

Collaborative Dream Catcher: Our Experiences with Domestic Violence

Dream Catcher College Video<<click here)

   At the Kansas City art institute we have several programs that help us as artists make connections with and help the community using our unique skill sets. Through this idea of artists being able to help the community in special ways I have become very involved in a program called Artplay. Artplay is a collective of artists that go to high-risk communities and offer learning opportunities, positive mentorship, a venue for expression, and sometimes just fun using art as the means to do this. A community that I have been working with is children of battered women at Rosebrook’s a local battered woman’s shelter.  We usually teach fun art or creative movement classes for an hour and one half each week. Sometimes we help the children beautify the premises by mural painting and making collaborative sculpture.  This past week we were privileged to be able to sit in on one of the children’s group therapy sessions and come up with an art therapeutic way to discuss the topic more.  Since the month of October is domestic violence awareness month we talked about our experiences with domestic violence.  As a class we came up with lists of ways that domestic violence could affect us, our families and, our communities. After that we utilized a large hula-hoop to make a web/dream catcher type structure.  The threads of the web came from everyone in a circle passing a yarn ball around. People that had similar experiences with domestic violence and abuse would pass the yarn to each other.  For example I would ask, “Has domestic violence affected your pets?” If three children were to answer yes to the question the yarn ball would be passed to each of those three and as they were winding the yarn around their section they could tell their story about there experience with domestic violence and pets. We went threw the list and made our webs pretty dense.  Then at the end of that class we talked about how we have shared experiences and how because as a group we understand what each other has been threw we have support and safety. It was a great class. We experienced group catharsis. We experienced togetherness. We learned about each other. We had fun!!!!