{"id":7222,"date":"2024-06-04T02:01:20","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T02:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=7222"},"modified":"2024-06-04T02:25:11","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T02:25:11","slug":"art-and-the-power-to-heal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=7222","title":{"rendered":"Art and the Power to Heal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Artists and community organizations around the world are increasingly turning to art to create positive social change.<\/p>\n

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Using her arms as a makeshift clapboard, a Sudanese woman in a black hijab and black-and-white caftan clapped her hands together, signaling the beginning of the rehearsal. The other amateur Thespians, wearing comic stick-on mustaches, moved to their marks, improvising a scene in a women\u2019s beauty salon where one patron\u2019s hair is accidentally dyed blue.<\/p>\n

As the scene ended, all the women were in hysterics, ribbing each other over how they could better play their parts next time. Scenes like this are common at the Kuluhenna Creative Workshop<\/a>, which is held at a community clubhouse on the outskirts of this Yorkshire city. The workshop is open to all local women, but with a focus on immigrant communities, including refugees and asylum seekers.<\/p>\n

The 90-minute class, which the Mafwa Theater<\/a> has held since 2019, is a happy space. Each week, some 15 women gather to tell stories, dance, act and gossip. They are provided with bus passes, a play area for their young children and an on-site health worker in case any of the women want to talk.<\/p>\n

Eman Elsayed, a mother of three originally from Egypt, said before she joined the workshop in 2020, she was \u201cdepressed, isolated and fed up\u201d with her life in Leeds. But eventually, especially after joining Mafwa Theater\u2019s associate artists<\/a> program in 2021, she felt her life change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cArt, it\u2019s a magic wand,\u201d said Elsayed, who now has a paid job doing community outreach for the program. \u201cBut you need to believe, and you need to take the time to see what it will do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mafwa\u2019s project is just one example of a larger trend \u2014 as more and more groups and individuals worldwide are using the arts to empower, unite and even help heal people who have suffered trauma, from war and natural disaster, or discrimination, poverty and displacement.<\/p>\n

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Artists and community organizations around the world are increasingly turning to art to create positive social change.Using her arms as a makeshift clapboard, a Sudanese woman in a black hijab and black-and-white caftan clapped her hands together, signaling the beginning of the rehearsal. The other amateur Thespians, wearing comic stick-on mustaches, moved to their marks, improvising a scene in a women\u2019s beauty salon where one patron\u2019s hair is accidentally dyed blue.As the scene ended, all the women were in hysterics, ribbing each other over how they could better play their parts next time. Scenes like this are common at the Kuluhenna Creative Workshop, which is held at a community clubhouse on the outskirts of this Yorkshire city. The workshop is open to all local women, but with a focus on immigrant communities, including refugees and asylum seekers.The 90-minute class, which the Mafwa Theater has held since 2019, is a happy space. Each week, some 15 women gather to tell stories, dance, act and gossip. They are provided with bus passes, a play area for their young children and an on-site health worker in case any of the women want to talk.Eman Elsayed, a mother of three originally from Egypt, said before she joined the workshop in 2020, she was \u201cdepressed, isolated and fed up\u201d with her life in Leeds. But eventually, especially after joining Mafwa Theater\u2019s associate artists program in 2021, she felt her life change.\u201cArt, it\u2019s a magic wand,\u201d said Elsayed, who now has a paid job doing community outreach for the program. \u201cBut you need to believe, and you need to take the time to see what it will do.\u201dMafwa\u2019s project is just one example of a larger trend \u2014 as more and more groups and individuals worldwide are using the arts to empower, unite and even help heal people who have suffered trauma, from war and natural disaster, or discrimination, poverty and displacement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7224,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7222"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7225,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7222\/revisions\/7225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}