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Programme|Spain|Local

L-Abe, Laboratory for Art, Wellbeing and Education

Project title

L-Abe, Laboratorio de Arte, Bienestar y Educación

Description of initiative

The research laboratory L-ABE (Art, Wellbeing and Education) is made up of specialists in the field of art therapy, artistic mediation and creation. L-ABE organises weekly workshop-visits for the general public and specific or special groups, from a participatory, self-reflexive and art-therapeutic approach.
L-ABE proposes participatory activities where the group will end up developing a creative work,
reflecting on everyday disobediences, small but perceptible resistances that, little by little, undermine a
little by little undermine a hegemonic system.

Methodology
The methodology based on art therapy proposes the approach to artistic objects from the connection, intercorporality, experience, projection, symbolisation and taking into consideration the union of perception-cognition-emotion. In this methodology, the creative process becomes a means of knowledge and introspection, at the same time as it brings out the link with others and one's own life project. The artistic object simultaneously embodies the transitional object that allows the connection of the being with the environment and culture. With this approach, each visit-workshop becomes a space of thought-action-emotion-transformation. of joint thought-action-emotion-transformation. In addition, the methodology of the sessions has been based on experiential education, given that we consider that the most valuable seed for generating meaningful learning is in the personal experiences that occur largely through the senses and emotion, together with memory and cognitive capacity. For this reason, the dialogued visits and the art therapy workshops have been the body-mind relationship of the people, favouring dialogue and group reflection so that they can give a personal and social meaning to what they experience in each part of the visit-workshop, discovering information about the works, in order to enrich the experience. The work of art thus becomes a dialectical element that opens up to its knowledge from the creative person -his or her space and time of creation-, but also from the space-time in which the work is perceived, the space-time of the visitors and their own narrative. The work acts as a germ of meaning open to interpretation in the exhibition device, generating new experiences for visitors.
L-ABE is a free activity offered to all audiences, from 6 to 106 years old, on Sundays, and during the week it is offered to groups on demand. These groups include children and adolescents in therapeutic day centres, homeless people, people in prison, victims of gender violence, health workers, among many others. LABE previously agrees objectives and procedures with the intervention team.

Further information on the initiative

Themes: Culture and...

Community well-being
Quality of social relations

Keywords

well-being, culture, visual art, resilience, mental health

Target group

Not targeted to a specific group

Cultural field

Heritage | Multimedia, new media, digital | Museums | Visual arts | Writing

Budget

€15.000

Timeframe

2021 - 2024

Sources of funding

Council of Madrid

Results, benefits, impact and lessons learnt

The surveys and focus groups carried out point to a more human and lively knowledge related to the works of art, self-regulation through cultural spaces, the treatment of complex issues (death, grief, pain, fear, etc.) in a calm, safe and warm environment, the capacity for reflection generated by the group before the artistic work and the work generated and the enrichment of dealing with issues related to the therapeutic group in cultural environments, which generates a breadth of these issues. Likewise, working with vulnerable groups in cultural spaces helps to normalise pathologies and fight against stigma.

Organizer(s)

EARTDI Grupo de Investigación Aplicaciones del Arte para la Inclusión Social. Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Spain
Public / State | Culture

Partner(s)

MADRID DESTINO
Spain
Public / State | Culture