Project Girl: Media Literacy & Empowerment

Several Naropa art therapy students fulfilled their 2009-2010 practicum experience or civic engagement requirement in the Community Art Studio in conjunction with the Boulder Youth Body Alliance.  Boulder Youth Body Alliance (BYBA) empowers youth to reclaim a positive body image. Through a variety of grassroots projects and activities, teens take action, reclaim their voices, and make a positive difference in their communities. BYBA peer educators and activists learn how to stop trying to change their bodies and work to change the world instead.

A variation of a national program called Project Girl was offered to middle school and high school girls in Boulder County.  Project Girl (PG) is an after-school program that combines art and media literacy into a unique educational program aimed at encouraging adolescent girls to become more critical consumers of contemporary media advertising and entertainment. The purpose of PG is to help girls become literate in all media forms—TV, internet, movies, magazines, newspapers, billboards, books, product labels, and music—so that they control the interpretation of what they see or hear rather than letting the interpretation control them.

To read all about the hard work of Naropa students and Project Girl

check out the blog: projectgirlboulder.blogspot.com 

or watch the video below created by PG practicum student Chelsea O'Neil

Photos from the Project Girl Exhibition on the Naropa campus:

iMovie as an Art Therapy Tool with Children

In the fall semester of the second year of the Naropa art therapy program, students take a child and adolescent populations course.  Through readings, discussion, practice sessions with children, experiential exercises and assignments, students focus on understanding development, art assessment, approaches to treatment and the practice of art therapy with a variety of child and adolescent populations.

Each student is paired with one child, ages ranging from 4-12, for a practicum art therapy experience.  In the Fall of 2009, Donica Snyder (pictured right) created a six session art therapy treatment plan that encouraged her child client to write his own myth, manifest his own characters and setting using art materials, and use photography and iMovie to put it all together in a stop-animation short.  Check out the amazing project that was created over the course of six sessions!  A great example of technology as a tool in the art studio.