The art workshops were conceived as a means of personal development and self-expression, as well as a source of enjoyment, through the use of artistic techniques, for street working and highly marginalised children and young people. Through the medium of art the workshops have been instrumental in helping children and adolescents make personal progress in a number of elements of their development.The principal objective of enabling children to develop their creativity, self-expression and communication skills through art was judged to have been achieved for the majority of children taking part in all the art groups run in the three different communities.

Children found it easier to develop, explore ad express some of their feelings about the situations they find themselves in through artistic, rather than verbal means. By sharing such thoughts the children also learned to communicate their feelings and reflect upon their lives verbally. The workshops topics were chosen so that the participants could not only focus on the reality of their present situation but also on their hopes for the future and how such hopes might be achieved. The interactions within the group also indirectly provided the scope for other types of social development.

“These workshops provide positive spaces for interacting between the girls, boys and adolescents within their local neighbourhoods. The fact that the groups have art activities as their central focus means not only that children are encouraged to express themselves using different mediums but also that they begin to acquire new resources. As they develop their ideas and take part in positive experiences with their peers, they also begin to profoundly re-think their reality, their understanding of their reality and the perception that others have of their reality” Franklin Moreno, Juconi educator.

Regular meetings between Franklin and other JUCONI educators has meant that insights into a child’s inner world, gained during the art workshops, could be capitalised upon within the ordinary visits that educators and family therapists make to the child’s home. Without the regular communications within the JUCONI operational team such opportunities for making the most of art workshops might have been lost.

Within the 6 monthly JUCONI evaluation and planning workshop, the unanimous conclusion of the educators and therapists was that the workshops have gone far further than “providing a social and recreational space” for children which was their original expectation of the work. These workshops have become incorporated into the overall operational planning within JUCONI and are now an integral part of work with children and families.

One of the most interesting things about the artwork has been, just as Charlotte predicted, that the work is the impetus for exploring their ideas and helps make them explicit. We thought there would be a lot of talking before the artwork but it has turned out to be the other way around, it really does bring them together because it serves as a point of shared exploration as they look at each other’s work and think about it.

Baroness Sue Miller