MA Art Therapy lecture: Carrying on with the mission – bridging borders through online art therapy

Despite closed borders during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Red Pencil continued its overseas humanitarian mission work by leveraging on technology to reach its various beneficiaries.

Singaporeans Yen Chua and Nicole Yeo served as lead art therapist and assistant art therapist with educators in Bangalore, Jammu and Kashmir in India to run several intensive, multi-week, online training programmes.

In this presentation, they will be sharing their preparation for the programme as well as learning points working cross-culturally over a virtual platform.

About the speakers

Yen Chua is an artist, art therapist and educator. Yen conducts art and art therapy workshops and also lectures on art and art therapy. Some of the institutions she has taught at are the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Temasek Polytechnic and LASALLE College of the Arts. She has worked with individuals and groups with social-emotional issues, inmates, children with special needs, cancer patients, teenagers with behavioural problems and elderly clients. For the past two decades, she has held many solo and group exhibitions in Singapore, China and the US.

Nicole Yeo is a credentialed art psychotherapist with the Australian, New Zealand, and Asian Creative Arts Therapies Association (ANZACATA). Her clinical experience includes working with children with special needs, adolescents, and adults with various mental and emotional health needs ranging from trauma, emotional and physical abuse, attachment challenges, and behavioural challenges. Nicole is exploring the integration of art therapy in mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) during complex emergencies and in humanitarian settings.

About The Red Pencil Humanitarian Mission

Informed by a decade of experience and deep local expertise, The Red Pencil Humanitarian Mission’s procedures provide on the ground or technological operations, supervision, sustainable impact through coaching and peer groups, opportunities for students registered in a master’s degree in art therapy to contribute and learn from senior arts therapists, and remuneration for the work of certified arts therapists. For more information, visit www.redpencil.org.