Mid Sweden University

Background

Details findings from a project on the potential for arts activities and art therapy to support the mental health and wellbeing of children living in Kashmir.

Methods

The intervention engaged 30 school children over the course of one year who produced various forms of artwork and performances. In this paper, we report on project impacts, drawing on some of our qualitative measures including observations and interviews.

Results

Our research details impacts and improvements in areas of emotional expression, belonging, and agency. We also found an important role for schools to create safe, secure, and caring spaces to allow students to express themselves and work through traumatic feelings in a non-judgemental way.

Conclusions

School-based arts interventions can play an important role in the mental health and wellbeing of children. Critical here, however, are dedicated space, time, and resources to provide a supportive environment and to sustain activity in long-term.

About one in six children live in areas of conflict globally, with significant impact on mental health, behaviour, and life outcomes.1 Research on ways to help prevent and reduce suffering is paramount, yet assessing the impact of interventions on children in conflict contexts is challenging, beset with ethical, cultural, and psychometric difficulties.2 This practice report shares and reflects on the strategy developed to evaluate the impact of an arts intervention in the Kashmir Valley. This is a highly militarised area, where children were regularly exposed to violence, protests, and lockdowns, which severely impacted education and family life. In June 2020, conditions were compounded by the restrictions imposed by COVID-19. The arts-based intervention was conducted in one school and ran throughout the academic year (from August 2020). Thirty children (aged 10–15) were referred by the school to participate in a programme that was integrated into the curriculum. It included a range of art activities designed to enable expression and improve wellbeing, led by an artist and art therapist.

Increased scholarly and practitioner attention has been paid to community gardens and their potential impact on community building and sustainability, as well as a tool to combat the decline in physical and mental well-being connected to childhood obesity. Specifically, community gardens may play a role in on families’ eating habits, and there is a need to investigate parents’ perspectives of their children’s involvement in a rural community garden and to explore the impact this has on children’s and their families’ healthy eating habits. This is a small-scale pilot study of children’s involvement in a community garden. Using a qualitative design method, semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore parents’ viewpoints of their children’s eating habits prior to and after the children’s involvement. The data gathered was coded and organised into emerging themes for interpretation. The study found indications that children’s involvement in a community garden has a positive impact on children’s social development, confidence and food awareness, along with a noticeable influence on the family’s general healthy food consumption. While the findings suggest that involvement in a community garden has positive impact on children’s eating habits, further research is needed with a higher number of participants for more accurate data.

This paper focuses on art productions by children participating in an art-based wellbeing intervention project in Kashmir. Drawing on feminist security studies, we conducted narrative analysis to explore how children represent in/security. The locations of in/security were the environment, the body, and the socio-political realm. Children articulated nuanced and complex representations of the natural and social world, influenced by local and global forces, and created their own meanings and practices of in/security.

Three authors, from different cultural contexts and research fields, engage in a trialogue, interrogating three stages of research—formulation of research protocol, field work, and data analysis—in order to explore some of the complexities of translating meaning across cultures. The voices merge into three conclusions regarding narratives in/of translation. First, narratives as translations are always in a process of being translated and re- constructed. Second, researchers have to be aware of power issues through the whole research process. Third, reflexivity needs to be incorporated in all stages of the research practice.