BY AINSWORTH MORRIS

Career & Education writer

morrisa@jmaicaobserver.com

IF children diagnosed with disabilities are to be successful, art therapy has to be a main ingredient in their education, registered art therapists have said.

Speaking last Tuesday at the launch of ‘True Expressions: Our Story’, registered art therapist Lesli-Ann Belnavis said based on recent research she and her colleagues have conducted, art therapy has been shown to get students with various disabilities to express themselves beyound what is usually expected.

She further stated that art should be a focus of the education system as students who are disabled and cannot write, need the medium to express themselves.

“Art therapy is a psychological discipline that uses art as the main tool to help individuals express their emotions and issues,” Belnavis said.

‘True Expressions: Our Story’ is a project that has been funded by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ) since 2010 and will end at the end of this school year. The participants of the project, which comes to an end this academic year, were students from Genesis Academy and the STEP Centre in Kingston. Their work were on display between April 24 and 27 at Genesis Academy, located on South Camp Road in Kingston.

The EFJ pumped approximately $1.94-million into the project, which is geared at identifying methodologies through art that allows students with physical disabilities, especially those diagnosed with autism, to express themselves.

The main purpose of the exhibition is to illustrate how the process of art therapy has impacted the students between 3 and 21 years who received art therapy services under the project.

“Art therapy allowed the students to benefit in a way that they could express themselves,” Belnavis stressed.

“In some of the pieces you will see what some of their statements are. The painting and pictures show what their pieces were all about,” she said.

Head of the Philip Sherlock Centre at the University of the West Indies, Brian Heap, who has worked with disabled students overseas agreed with Belnavis.

“For me, art therapy is an essential part of education. Words, on the other hand, is a psychological discipline,” he said.

He said further that the psychological discipline which surrounds words isn’t always suitable for every student, especially those who are disabled and unable to fully focus.

With art therapy, he said, students don’t come with any expectations and are free to express themselves. Such freedoms, he argued, will make the students independent individuals in society.