Project: Preventing gender-based violence in adolescent relationships. Group experience with adolescents in Art Workshop with therapeutic focus

Abstract

In the following article, I will describe the experience of an Art Workshop developed during the first academic period of 2018, which aimed to provide tools to prevent situations of gender-based violence within adolescent romantic relationships. The workshop included resources from art therapy and was carried out in an educational institution that receives a grant from the Chilean State. This institution’s mission is to educate students within a process of integral formation, enhancing their learning to have the possibility to go to University. The students from this educational community are from middle and lower middle class. Several students come from rural sectors close to the city where the school is located, that is, San Fernando, Chile. First, activities were carried out to strengthen the bonds of trust between the participants. Subsequently, a presentation was made on gender stereotypes and how these are exhibited in daily life. Then, we reviewed what gender-based violence is and how it is possible to identify how and why it arises within the romantic relationships of adolescents. Finally, the participants defined what a stable relationship meant to them, that is, free from violent situations. The discipline of art therapy was fundamental to work on the aspects just mentioned since it allowed participants to communicate visually and intuitively. The unconscious (a central concept in art therapy because it is projected in the creation of images) was manifested through art and facilitated therapeutic and creative processes in the students, deepening what gender-based violence means, as well as its origin and consequences. In this article, I will describe my observations of the activities carried out in the workshop; the interaction of the participants in the realization of the instructions, also their questions and answers before them, both visually and orally. The intervened group consisted of 10 students who were in their last year of secondary education (high school), of mixed gender. The workshop lasted a whole semester and was held after the usual School classes, once a week at the School’s art classroom. The materials used were provided by the School to the students in each session, which lasted 1,5 hours (with a total of thirteen sessions).