Team building is an immensely crucial part of any organisation. Various things can be done to improve the bonding of the group members. One of the best-applied practices is Art Therapy. It is a discipline that combines visual art media and creative expression methods. Art therapy team-building activities are gaining popularity these days. Various team members and individuals are using it for not only well-being but also to improve creative problem solving and intuitive leadership. Furthermore art therapy team-building can help an Organisation engage it’s team members in it’s vision and values beyond words. Empowered Art Therapy provides services that include art therapy team-building activities. Let’s know more!
What Is Art Therapy?
Art therapy includes the mental health and allied health professions. It helps to enrich the lives of communities, families, and individuals. It involves active art-making, applied psychological theory, creative processes, and human experience within a nurturing therapeutic relationship.
Art therapy is provided by a professional art therapist who can effectively support the goals of personal and relational treatment. Generally, art therapy is for improving cognitive & sensorimotor functions. Besides, it helps cultivate emotional resilience, enhancing social skills, and to alleviate stress.
What Happens In Art Therapy?
Many art therapy team-building activities can be utilised from the particulars of each session. Usually, a session’s goal is to provide participants with a means of self-expression while also assisting them in exploring their feelings. It can increase positivity and self-esteem. It can also help an individual make meaning which can promote healing.
Art therapy participants don’t need any prior art experience or expertise. Rather, the focus is on the art making process and not necessarily an art outcome. Besides, art therapists who facilitate it need a Master’s degree, at least 750 hours of supervised clinical practice, and additional ongoing professional development in art therapy to maintain their membership of National peak bodies for Psychotherapy and Counselling.
Art Therapy Team Building Activities For Your Team
Draw With The Non-Dominant Hand
Using your non-dominant hand to draw encourages the brain to function differently. New thoughts, feelings, and ideas may emerge as a result of this. This activity also helps people in building a strong team providing and promoting the means for creative problem solving to find solutions.
Emotions Colour Wheel
Fill a blank wheel with 6–10 different emotions. Encourage participants to complete each wheel with the hues, forms, concepts, and objects that best capture their feelings for each positive and negative emotion. Organizations like Empowered Art Therapy know how to implement such activities effectively within a collaborative group setting.
Write A Hero’s Story
The benefits of using creative writing as a form of emotional expression have been repeatedly demonstrated to aid in exploring emotion and feelings through self-reflection. It could be written by hand or created through a series of symbols. One art therapy team-building activity is to start writing the stories with a theme, word, or phrase. The art therapist will then lead the team through these prompts to build a story of courage, challenge, resilience and triumph.
Self-Portraits With A Twist
The next activity that helps a team in building strong bonding is making self-portraits with a twist. It is one of the art therapy techniques where participants use canvas, cardboard, or paper, for drawing themselves as a tree. Starting with the roots, team members symbolically depict what nurtures them. Then depicting what they present to the world in the tree trunk. The tree branches represent their goals and aspirations, and the landscape their tree is depicted growing within represents their support. It supports the self-esteem, values and resilience of every participant.
More Art Therapy Ideas For A Better Environment
Building A Safe Place
A safe place to work is a vital thing for every employee to be productive and work peacefully. So, it is best to encourage the team to build and maintain a safe space. It is easily possible by using art therapy exercises. Empowered Art Therapy can guide you with activities.
For instance, here is one activity. Ask everyone to picture a safe place. It could be an imaginary space or might be a mix of places. Team members are then invited to paint a symbol that represents their safe place on a river pebble. By doing this, everyone can create something tangible to focus on and refer to helping them stay calm in stressful situations.
Group collaboration creation
Want to bring alive your group’s Vision Statement and Values? By bringing team members together and working on a large canvas or wall hanging collaboratively, they can create meaningful art with an empowering group message. With the large canvas laid flat on a table, participants gather around and are invited to add a design, colour or depiction of the group’s vision and values on the area of the canvas in front of them. At 5 minute intervals, participants are then invited to step to their right and add to the design that is in front of them on the large canvas. This is repeated until the participants return to their design, where they began. At the end of this group collaboration creation, the large canvas creates a focal point every team member is engaged in, mirroring their engagement with the group’s vision statement and values.
Conclusion
Lastly, art therapy team-building activities are the best way to strengthen your collaborations. But only art therapists know how to perform the activities in the right manner. Thus, appointing a professional is always the best option.