As advocates against bullying, we are always excited to hear of children and youth involvement in prevention. A recent program in Maryland proved that Kids Artwork Fights Bullying. With involvement from various schools, the Diverse Expressions project has become a great way for victims of bullying to speak out in art or poetry to share their experiences with others.
KIDS ARTWORK FIGHTS BULLYING
The art of story telling has long been one of the greatest ways to communicate a point to those around us. Diverse Expressions was an excellent contest that allowed children to share their experiences in the form of stories, images or poetry. Not only were they able to share their own experiences, they were able to share ways to prevent or stop bullying.
Sadly, even our youngest students can face bullying in their classroom and peer groups. By drawing pictures of the incidents or writing a short poem about how they felt, they can reach out to their entire school or community in hopes of preventing it from happening to others. Some of the students who submitted works as spoken about in this recent article about children fighting bullying, had experienced bullying that left them feeling alone and afraid. By creating artwork that told their individual bullying story, they were able to express themselves in a way that was easy to understand by all around them.
As we continue moving forward in our fight against bullying, the involvement of our children at all ages is very important. Not only should we begin teaching our kids early about what bullying is and how to spot it, we should be teaching them about how to not be a bully. Artwork fights bullying because it is something everyone can do. Art is not specific to just paint, coloring, drawing, poetry or music. To create is art. Kids artwork fights bullying, because it is so obviously their own story. A child who cannot verbally express themselves with ease can readily do so with crayon, paint or music.
In what ways do you think kids artwork fights bullying? Have your children ever created anti-bullying art?
that’s a pretty good idea on the part of the school