Creativity and COVID: A Lived Experience Perspective” at the Alternatives 2021 Conference. July 10, 2021 at 12PM EST.
The Alternatives conference continues on the legacy of the late Judi Chamberlin, a pioneering leader in the peer rights movement, and is funded entirely through registration fees and donations. “We will be ‘on our own’ again, connecting to the roots of our movement,” said conference chair Anthony Fox. “We will be free and empowered to express our unique voices, to learn from each other in the spirit of self-help, mutual support, and the principles of recovery in action, with the goal of living full and independent lives in the community.”
My talk draws upon the artwork and personal narratives about surviving the emotional impact of the pandemic featured in Mad in America’s online exhibition “Creativity and COVID: Art-Making During the Pandemic”, which I currated. I’ll explore the arts as a way to transform suffering and trauma, individual as well as collective.
We’ll explore different art-making practices such as:
- Art in the body
- Art as container for altered states, suffering, anger and trauma
- Art as mindfulness.
We’ll also talk about creating accessibility in art-making through:
- Dropping the gate keeper of “talent” and “good art”
- By not defining what art “is” for anyone.
- We’ll think about accessibility as it relates to psychiatric survivors and psychiatric drug withdrawal
- Learn how to allow for spontaneous art-making through non judgement and validation of different practices and expressions.
Together we’ll think about how art-making creates social change in public and private spaces. And ask the question: Can art-making help us come out of this pandemic a better people?