What is Art? In my opinion it’s the best way of expressing yourself, your feelings, character, temperament – from an artist’s point of view; and the best way of taking a rest, having fun and even healing yourself and reflecting on life – from an aesthete’s point of view. Art hides something beautiful and impressive for everyone considering its various types and genres.
I’ve been tightly connected with Arts since I was a little child. I spent the first seven years in school in a musical class where I and my classmates studied singing, solfege and playing the piano.
Later, I continued with the stage performances in all their forms till the end of high school, and slowly but surely started falling in love in all other forms of Art. Thus, I can say that the last years my favorite ones are theater and writing, especially poetry which I’m even creating myself as a philologist.
One of the best advantages of Art is that it teaches you some great and important skills such as motor skills, language development, rhetorical skills, decisiveness, visual learning and memorization, criticality, creativity and ingenuity, and so on – which I truly appreciate! But how could I imagine that Art has another aspect – of solving problems? Surely, I couldn’t. I’ve always been thinking it’s a way of escaping problems but seemingly, the key for the solutions of these problems appeared to be also in Art.
The first time I noticed this advantage of Arts was on one of my Erasmus+ projects where we were expressing different problems related to disrespecting of human rights, racism, homophobia, etc. through music, dancing, drawing, writing, theater and movie lab. There I realized how easy and clear is this way to reveal problems to think about to an audience, and lately, even to discuss and find possible solutions of them.
On my next project we played different simulation games and had forum theater activities to concern the topic of migration and refugee crisis and we had the opportunity to step in refugees’ and disadvantaged people’s shoes by performing different scenes which we created alone, by ourselves, working in groups.
The “Art” tools made me see how much easier is to imagine and understand one problem and to start thinking of solving it. Because this way is more expressive and have effect on people’s emotions and sensitiveness. Once I read:
„The theater is the greatest form of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what is to be a human being”
and I totally agree with this quote.
But not only – all other forms of Art help people to relax, to create a connection with the psyche for the purpose of healing the person, kinda unlocks the unconscious and frequently can be a kind of therapy. For example, drawing helps you develop logical thinking, creative imagination, trains memory, increases attention to important details. As a therapy, drawing can help people in different situations. For example, to let go of fear or a problem, it is enough to paint it and then to change our drawing so that we can change our emotions in a positive direction.
Photo therapy shows that observing one's own image on photos often leads to improved self-esteem, inspires positive emotionality and promotes personal development. Another way of self-awareness and self-expression is psychodrama. This approach uses drama techniques to help people represent their past, present or expected life situations through roleplays. Music and dance are also amazing way of expressing inner self and touching other’s people souls.
Doesn’t matter what exactly the Art is, it’s all about its power to reach people on deeper level – for solving a problem it’s firstly needed to look inside ourselves, to try to express the things in the most emotional way in order to touch people’s hearts strongly, to put ourselves in other people’s shoes (for which Art helps a lot). The more emotional and expressive the way of showing a problem is, the more dedicated and committed to solution people are!
by Silvia Plamenova
Participant in
TC “Let them be heard” in Braga, Portugal