As part of the project Health Transformed by Art, which aims to build on the “healing power of the arts,” a workshop pertaining to the art-based therapy was held in two phases in Kathmandu last week.

Phase one of the workshop, which took place on March 12th and 13th at the Ram Shankar Auditorium of Kanti Children’s Hospital, was targeted for young artists, while the second phase focused on the children as young as two years old to 13; held at the Cancer ward of the same hospital, the workshop saw the young artists mentor the children who were undergoing treatment at the hospital.

According to the workshop organisers, the children admitted in the hospital were mostly found watching movies, cartoons or playing video games while in the hospital and were not engaged in something that enriches their creativity. “Hence,” they said, “the activities in the workshop were designed for children in such a way that they can get a break from the monotonous hospital environment, parents can rejoice and the hospitals can realise that engaging children in activities like these can help to positively impact their overall well being… The major focus was on directly interacting with them applying art based therapy.”

The workshop saw a total of 11 young artists mentor the children battling with various forms of cancer. Speaking about her experience, one of the young artist-mentor, Manantuna Rana Jyapoo, said, “In art, there is always an end product, but what I liked best about art therapy is that the process of engaging the other person in art itself was therapeutic and we don’t need an end product to create value… At first, it was a bit difficult to approach the children and we needed to be extremely sensitive with them, but after spending 2 days with them, it was difficult to part ways.”