By Parshina Elizaveta | Project Leader
How do we express our feelings and emotions, how do we calm down, fill the vacuum inside? Someone do it with the help of family and friends, others on interesting job or hobbies, while travelling. People raised in orphanages or who live in psychoneurological mental homes very often don’t have that opportunities. But they have opportunity to attend Art Studio classes at Big Change.
Why drawing is so useful in educational process? - Because everyone can do it. It doesn’t necessary to study for a lot of hard time to have an ability to express what you feel. They can just start draw and to feel calm and more open to the world. Our students have difficult life circumstances and drawing helps them to share their situation with everyone.
In April 2015 Big Change held an exhibition of student's paintings. The drawing teacher of Big Change Mihail Mihailovic told about our students, their paintings, stories and progress.
Here are some of them:
Olga is a little over 30; in past she lived in psychoneurological mental home. She is disabled – she has limits to movements and curvature of arms. She started to draw because she thought it would help her as rehabilitation. In the beginning of her practice she spent several hours on little sketch. I was amazed about the results she achieved. I do not even need to describe them to you, just take a look on previous foto.
Vitalik is 19 y.o., he graduated from correctional school, has speech defects. Drawing helps him to express everything, what is not always possible for him through words. Two years ago Vitalik had hundreds of sketches with the same story – the castle on the cliff on one side, little lonely tree on the opposite side, also the gulf and no bridge. The castle represented home, the place where he could live and where the dreams came true. Unfortunately it is obvious that the gulf represented the fact that he didn’t have that home.
Look at his picture after 2 years of study in Big Change – little tree moves closer to the castle, there is also a bridge. It may seem that these are small insignificant details. But it is not so. It is a huge progress for him as for the other students of Art Studio. And they make this progress thanks to your help.
Thank you very much again for that!!
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