If I were to critique the projects that I have initiated at my site which include a collaborative banner that reads We All Belong, and a series of collaborative letter projects that read Everyone Matters, Art Belongs to Everyone and Art Is Essential, I would say that the collaborative nature of these projects actually obscures individual experience and becomes instead a series of socialist mantras. The original idea was to create powerful slogans that were to be placed in public spaces to challenge perceptions of the mentally ill and to spread positive messages in the community.
My supervisor felt it was important to recognize the role of art making in the lives of the participants of art therapy groups at C4, thus the instillations Art Belongs to Everyone and Art Is Essential were created. The participants at C4 fully embraced these messages and seemed by all means to really enjoy making the letters. At this point, I hadn’t quite articulated my hesitancy to endorse Art’s role in empowerment, but I think it has something to do with the oversimplification of this idea that art alone can heal anything.
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