Concept and references : starting point¶
General overview of the project : first idea, December¶
What is eco-anxiety?¶
Definition¶
Charline Schmerber is a french psychotherapist working on the topic of eco-anxiety: she made researches and statistics about a survey she launched. She made this survey online. It kept online from 10 september to 10 october 2019. 1264 people answered this online questionnaire.
Some more information¶
In this magazine, you can find an article : "Etes-vous éco-anxieux ?"(Are you eco-anxious?)
"Les éco-anxieux sont confrontés à l'"hubris d'impuissance", cette volonté de puissance contrariée, aussi bienveillante que démesurée, cette ambition de vouloir soigner le monde sont des résolutions bien trop difficiles à assumer pour un individu seul."
( Eco-anxious people are confronted to this "powerlessness of the hubris", this frustrated "will-to-power", as benevolent as inmoderate, this ambition to heal the world are resolutions that are way too difficult to bear for a sole individual." )
Alice Desbiolles
https://www.socialter.fr/article/eco-anxiete-capitalisme-profit
Transforming anxiety, sadness or anger into action
Making with your hands to soothe your mind¶
Working with our hands betters our psychological health. Many manual activities, such as moulding, weaving, sculpting, sewing, painting, are known to stimulate the brain. They can help reduce stress, and better the neuronal plasticity. Our fine motricity and concentration are also getting better thanks to this crafts. It soothes the mind.
Dre Kelly G. Lambert¶
Behavioural scientist and author
She wrote the book Lifting Depression: A neuroscientist's hands-on approach to activating your brain's healing power
She works on neuraplasticity, that is the fact that our brain is always changing, and not carved in stone.
Connections between neurons. These connections are influenced by our experience. We can produce new cells during our lifetime.
Neurons have extensions to grab other neurons : these are synapses.
Our brain is plastic: it is malleable, it changes.
It changes in respond to the demands of our interaction with our environment, and our thoughts also.
Also this article by Kelly G. Lambert , untiltled Depressing Easy, written in 2008, is very interesting in the understanding of this ability of the brain, and of the importance of the hands'use in our everyday life.
According to this article "the motor structures that control our movements are intimately connected to the reward center - where we register pleasure - and to the cortical area of our brain that controls higher thought processes. Because of the interconnectivity of the brain areas that control movement, emotion and thinking, doing activities that involve a number of these components fully engaged the effort-driven-rewards circuit."
Also : " The decreased brain activation associated with increasingly effortless-driven rewards may, over time, diminish your perception of control over your environment and increase your vulnerability to mental illnesses such as depression."
" What can we do to protect ourselves against the onset or tenacious persistence og depression ?
Poring over a scrapbook project or knitting a sweater may distract you from the stress in your life and engage your brain in intense ways that are beneficial to our mental health. [...] when you are faced with a challenge and embark on the dynamic process of deciding on an effective strategy, implementing the plan and observing the final desirable outcome, you brain take note of these situations so that it can access similar response strategies in the future."
What is art-therapy?¶
According to the CAIRN, art-therapy is "the support of people in need (psychological, physical, social or existencial) through their artistic productions : plastic, sonorous, theatrical, literary, corporal or danced pieces of art. This subtil work, which takes our vulnerabilities as a material, is less for the purpose of unveiling the inconscious significances of the productions and more for allowing the subject to recreate himself, to create again in a symbolistic path, from creation to creation. Art-therapy is then the art of projecting oneself into a piece of art as an enigmatic moving message, and to work on this piece of art to work on oneself. Art-therapy is a deflection to approch our self."
Am I an art-therapist ?
No. So I really need to be precise in defining the type of workshop I want to organize, and the way I want to adress the topic of eco-anxiety. To follow more of my adventures in eco-anxiety, let's go to this page.
First prototypes¶
Here are the first results of felting that I obtained and that allowed me to validate the concept of felted pebbles with dog hairs and human hair.
Trying different templates :
I realized that human hair is harder to felt correctly. It is possible but both carding and felting are harder with these some fibers.
First Cairn
Moodboard¶
Collect images to give insight in your vision: colors, shapes, sounds, images, words..
Challenges to come¶
Questioning myself on legitimacy
Confronting to the world
I chose to do this project because it is a completely new experience for me. I am not very confortable with sharing a project to a larger scale, and here, I will have to open this project to the world!
Also, it is the moment for me to start social medias (which is something I am not more comfortable with).
Mentoring notes¶
WEEK 2 :
Global Mentoring 11/01/2023
Nuria :
- go and check on SheMakes workshops presentations
- think about the target, the number of people...practical informations about workshops : it makes it easier to contact people then
- think also about the material for the workshops
Anastasia:
- dudua : workshops in Barcelona
- think of your workshop before contacting people too fastly
Cecilia:
- MatterOfTrust (to collect fibers)
- write down everything you have already done, so you see that things are going on
Local Mentoring 13/01/2023
Diane:
- maybe make a presentation for the potential structures that could host the workshops