Art Extravaganza of October 18th!

Play, especially free time for play and playing together, is an essential piece of child development. Art provides an open space for creativity, engaging the right and left hemispheres of the brain. As part of October is Resilience Month, CRI partnered with Brigette Phillips of Mindful Art and hosted a night of de-stressing with art for parents and children. About 20 people attended for pizza, painting, and family time together.

Read our previous showcase of Mindful Art here.

To Brigette, art provides a form of communication that can be open, free, and honest. A former counselor, Brigette started the business of Mindful Art to pair this unique expression of emotion with mindfulness, self-acceptance, and resilience. 

On the night of October 18th, Parents and children painted together, either on a canvas or on a small rock. They painted pictures, and used words of kindness and love to create positive messages they could hold on to.

"I loved being apart of this community event," Brigette reflects. "The kids got so excited and showed me their pictures and rocks. And I'd give them positive feedback and tell them what a wonderful job they did." An important component of Mindful Art is positive reinforcement- using art as an opportunity to tell a child that their work is beautiful, to simply share positive words.

Ultimately, Teri Barila of CRI wanted to focus on parents and children playing together. According to a recent Health Youth Survey (https://www.askhys.net/Analyzer), in Walla Walla county, a student's time spent playing with a parent was correlated with higher grades in school; children who said that their parents provided fun things to do were often reporting As and Bs in school. Thus Teri wanted to create a similar space of connected play for the Art Extravaganza. 

Indeed, Brigette also felt that the environment was fun for families to play together. "What I liked the best was that it wasn't just kids painting by themselves; parents were painting with their kids. The parents got very involved, and it was a great family environment where they could have time together."

 Brigette will be hosting upcoming events with her colleague Shasta Meyers. They will be creating a trauma-informed space, paired with Mindful Art as showcased in the above profile. The events will take place in Walla Walla, and will begin in the Spring.

Thank you to the families who attended this event! Stay tuned for more reflections on events of October is Resilience Month!