Katey B.'s Senior Project Blog!

Young children are often flooded with emotions only a canvas can express. In most schools, art education is often reduced to an extracurricular or elective leaving children without a place to process and learn to manage their emotions. There are many reasons why visual art courses should be valued in the education system. While some students may be capable of managing and communicating their emotions effectively, many students lack the tools to do so and can feel overwhelmed or lash out at other students. My project aims to investigate how visual art helps children manage, process, and regulate their emotions. While researching, I will also take into consideration that these children may have different monetary or social situations at home that may affect their emotional state. While working with the Red Hook Art Project and observing visual art classes at BASIS Independent Brooklyn, I will begin to measure how students are impacted by making visual art. I will speak with art therapists to gather what kinds of visual art are most beneficial to children for emotional regulation. Additionally, I plan to survey parents and determine what emotional changes they see in their children after making art or attending art classes. Overall my research for this project is conducted through observation, interviews with parents and children, and academic journaling. I hope to see how art is beneficial to students' emotional regulation and look at how the art education system can be improved to best benefit students' emotional regulation.