"We will keep going as long as it takes."

-- Dr. Aralynn McMane, Director, Global Youth & News Media

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Please can you let me know the submission timeline for this?

 

Editors are setting their own deadlines for print editions or online display, but we strongly encourage collection of art as soon as possible as this is a quickly changing situation and put them all online in your branded Instagram (or some other social media) account with the #KidsDrawPeace4Ukraine, then put all or a selection in the print edition. We explain lower how we showcase the work.
 

Is there any age limit for children’s participation?

 

“Children” generally means up to age 18.

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 Also, how should the art be published?

 

Each editor does the publishing as they wish with at the very least the #KidsDrawPeace4Ukraine hashtag and, if they choose, also the logo, which serve as uniting elements that people can find over various platforms.

 

Also, because people have asked for a “landing page,” we will continue to showcase work here by linking to each editor's collection.

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We are also encouraging editors to give Hopes & Dreams Drawing Kits to the nearest ainian embassy or consulate as a morale boost and for also for their own children.

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But it's the online distribution that counts most now. And remember that pictures without words can be even more generally understood, and use that hashtag: #KidsDrawPeace4Ukraine.

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PHASE 2: A PAGE FOR REFUGEE CHILDREN TO DRAW THEIR  HOPES AND DREAMS

 

How do you know a drawing page for refugee children won't further traumatize them?

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Artist Hannah Rose Thomas, who worked with teams doing art therapy with Syrian refugees in Jordan, advised Global Youth & News Media on the directions to give refugee children for drawing their pictures.

 

“Art is a creative way to counteract the conspiracy of silence that so often prevails for

those who have who have experienced trauma,” she had told an interviewer in 2018.

 

Thomas called the #KidsDrawPeace4Ukraine project “powerful and important work” and agreed with our choice the words to encourage the direction of the children’s art: “My hopes and dreams.”

 

“I think that this is a wonderful idea, especially in light of the fact that a therapist is not present,” she said.

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Washington Post reporters had Ukrainian refugee children at a Polish train station draw what had stood out for them in the previous weeks. How is this project different from that action?

 

THE WASHINGTON POST STORY

 

We ask that our positive art drawing activity be done once a child is either in a refugee center or a home setting with the knowledge that someone is supporting them further by furnishing drawing supplies. The people who provide those drawing supplies have the satisfaction of having done something to help that is pretty easy and accessible even to the very young

 

The Washington Post story had text and pictures and film of children as they drew in a Polish train station. The results were fascinating, but we are uneasy with that approach as those children were not yet in a stable environment (refugee center or a home) and were pretty much ambushed, even if their parents surely were asked to gave permission. The task approached hard-core trauma art therapy, but with apparently no therapist present. When one little girl started crying, who was there to know – really – what to do next?

 

We think it is important to be extremely careful so are keeping our focus on what specialists call “positive art therapy,” which advocates exactly that, the positive hopes of peace for Ukraine.  As art therapist Carolyn Melhomakulu has put it, “The research around positive psychology suggests that there is a lot of benefit in intentionally focusing on things like positive experiences, hope and gratitude.”
 

More questions? Just send them along using our contact form below.