The artist within – Applied eMOTION was a long-term project with the aim of sharing best practices between sectors and methods connected to art expressions. We invited institutions, helping professional colleagues to develop their entrepreneurship and creative skills by using different artistic tools in individual and group work.
During the years we managed to learn about and synthesise methods using different modalities of expression in helping professions. First we shared our best practices and approaches and we researched ways of possible integration into different helping fields. Then we started to develop curriculums in formal and non-formal education along a continuous discussion and debate based on our diverse realities and practices.
It reached the moment when we tested them in three levels, involving university personnel and students and already practising helping professionals too. Furthermore, along the process we researched, noted and built on the reasons of burn-out in helping professions and the possibilities for innovation, entrepreneur skills and educating creative learning attitudes. The transfer and/or implementation of innovative practices with the partners resulted in a greater understanding and responsiveness to social, psychological and cultural diversity of the target groups. In addition to that, professional development and sectorial cooperation was reached at organisational, local, national, and European levels.
Our findings were recorded in a publication and a toolkit, which is an extra bonus on to this kind of project. We found this very important to note and share our results with all working in the field of helping professions, being part of formal or non-formal education. We foresee the next step bringing these results to more specific groups and more detailed educational plans along new aims.
Art does not solve problems, but makes us aware of their existence and through different ways of expression (especially having an integrative approach) we can work with the problems and lead them to another level of understanding.
We reached our objectives to
• Share and discuss methodologies
• Skill, competence development of helping professionals
• Re-developed methodology based on outcomes
• Professional networking
• Sectorial cooperation
• Promotion of the use of art in formal and non-formal activities of helping professions
We ran different activities to do so:
I. International meetings (only for partners)
II.A
Trainings to share best practices (open for helping professionals)
• Training I. “Integral expression and dance therapy training”, Hungary February 28 – March 8. 2015.
• Training II. “Storytelling and cartoons”, Italy June 28 Sunday – July 6. 2015.
• Training III. “Humour strategies in helping professions”, Germany 3-11. October 2015.
II.B
All trainings were followed by local pilot activities. The participants, as a follow-up to the courses, designed and ran workshops, events integrating and adapting the shared method into their work. The results were published and shared among the partnership, and used to create a new curriculum for the last training.
II.C Training to develop and test new curriculums
• Training IV. “Integration of the methods and piloting curriculums”, Poland, 2-10. April 2016.
III. Research and publication on our results
• burn out in helping professions
• creative methodologies and innovation
• recommendation on the use of art methods in helping professions
• curriculums and learning outcomes
Partners
Association on Refugees and Migrants, ARM-BG (www.arm-bg.blogspot.com), Bulgaria
Społeczna Akademia Nauk, SAN (www.spoleczna.pl), Poland
Comparative Research Network e.V., CRN (www.comparative-research.net), Germany
Theater Vision e.V., (http://theater-vision.de), Germany
EURO-NET (www.synergy-net.info), Italy
Hungarian Association for Expressive Arts and Dance Therapy, IKTE (www.ikte.hu), Hungary