Art as a Liberatory Practice in School

Any time that we can offer students the opportunity to engage in arts and crafts within a teaching lesson or counseling activity, we create a space that affirms their autonomy and humanity, placing them in the role of a creator with the freedom and tools to build the masterpieces and world they want and deserve -- within the walls of the classroom and beyond.

Two of my favorite quotes regarding art are attributed to the Spanish painter and sculptor Paublo Picasso: “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday living.” and “Every child is an artist.” Combined, I believe these two quotes form a powerful foundation for the role of art as an instrument for restoring humanity in school systems and beyond. Creativity requires independent thinking and spontaneity -- both attributes which threaten any sort of system of domination and control. Art stands in direct opposition to obedience and conformity, as it requires a distinctive eschewing of rules and a joyful nonconformity to expectations, in order for it to exist at all.

Meanwhile, “create” purportedly comes from the Latin word creatus which means “to bring into being”. In this way, at the root of creativity -- and, by extension, art -- is our very existence and humanity; our ability to be and to bring into being. Herein, I believe, lie the seeds for the sort of liberation that comes from self-expression. Art allows people to define who they are and express who they are on their own terms, affirming and restoring their agency and personhood. They can bring into being drawings, writing, paintings, songs, poems, etc. and more broadly can use that same creativity to bring into being the sort of classrooms, schools, and world they want. Art both reflects the world back to itself and creates it. Art and creativity are key. Children, as Pablo Picasso pointed out, are artists by nature. The world is newer to them and they often see it with fresh perspective, openness, and imagination. Fostering this creativity and helping ensure that students bring the open-mindedness and compassion of their artistry with them into adulthood is a vital role of any teacher or school operating from a humanistic framework. 

In my work as a school counseling graduate student intern working with elementary-aged students, I have been finding art to be an incredibly important tool in helping to promote students’ empathy, self- expression, self-confidence, and healing. Children often tend to gravitate towards play and art as forms of communication and self-expression more so than to traditional talk therapy. As a result, I typically offer students a range of toys, games, and arts and crafts options to engage with while also talking through their concerns and feelings. Whether they are showing me how to make paper airplanes, decorating the plain cover of a journal with markers/stickers, making friendship bracelets in various Pride flag colors to express their identity, acting out silly scenes for a game of charades, or pasting magazine images onto an “All About Me” collage, simply providing students with the blank paper, stickers, beads, markers, and other craft materials necessary to engage in creativity seems to empower them to truly be themselves. And what better way to restore and promote one’s humanity? 

School systems are often structured in such a way as to teach obedience and conformity, and this at times applies even, and perhaps especially, to how they teach art. I recently worked with a student who came to the guidance office in tears. His class was making thank you cards for someone who had come into their classroom to read Dr. Seuss books and his teacher was insisting he draw the Cat in the Hat on his thank you note like everyone else, but he wanted to just draw the hat. Rather than recognizing that this was a thank you note and of course if he wanted to just draw the hat it was fine, his teacher insisted he follow the expectation she had set for the class to all draw the same thing on the front of the card. This really highlighted for me the rigidity that underscores instruction in so many schools. When speaking with his teacher, she revealingly explained to me: “I care about him. I want to make sure he’s prepared for the world.” A world where people are made to be obedient to the point of not even being able to design their own thank you cards is not the kind of world anyone should have to be prepared for. It is my hope that students such as this young boy will hold onto their creativity with everything they’ve got; that their creativity will be powerful enough to withstand the education system and, someday, to change it. As Albert Einstein is attributed as saying: “It is a miracle curiosity survives a formal education.” 

As counselors and teachers, we are in a unique position to ensure that students’ creativity is fostered and protected rather than stamped out. Any time that we can offer students the opportunity to engage in arts and crafts within a teaching lesson or counseling activity, we create a space that affirms their autonomy and humanity, placing them in the role of a creator with the freedom and tools to build the masterpieces and world they want and deserve -- within the walls of the classroom and beyond.