After observing increasing isolation, anxiety, and depression among students during the COVID-19 pandemic, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Japan and the United States collaborated to create a course entitled “Creativity and Wellbeing” to help students address these issues. In this panel, a drama specialist, two creative writers, an artist and art therapist, and a registered positive psychology practitioner will present “Creativity and Wellbeing: Theory, Practice, and Research,” based on their co-teaching and research in this course at a small liberal arts university in Northern Japan. Introducing the results of a pre- and post-course Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving survey that showed overall positive growth in wellbeing among students in the first cohort of the class, they will go on to discuss how combining positive psychology, drama, creative writing, and visual art can enhance student expression and wellbeing. The panel will discuss how providing concepts from positive psychology helps students accept negative emotions, leading to better self-expression and self-acceptance. It will share how using a drama approach can bring awareness to wellbeing on both individual and community levels. Furthermore, it will discuss the inner worlds students create through an “erasure poem” project entitled “The forest inside me.”
The use of creative visualization, forest bathing, and free-writing as tools for self-discovery and personal expression, as well as the sense of safety and self that contributes to wellbeing through the drawing of a personal safe space, as well as a collaborative drawing, will be discussed.

Authors:
Lee Friederich, Akita International University, Japan
Naeko Naganuma, Akita International University, Japan
Naoko Araki, Akita International University, Japan
Joel Friederich, Akita International University, Japan
Hiromi Sone, Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Lee Friederich is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at Akita International University in Japan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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