Initiative for Women with Disabilities: Young Women's Program
Ages 14-21
About The Artists
We all attend the Young Women's Program (YWP) which has introduced us to concepts of health and wellness through classes and workshops in exercise/fitness, wellness, expressive arts and discussion groups. The program has allowed us to meet different people and make new friends. It is a time when we can be ourselves and share our concerns and feelings with other young women with physical disabilities. We learn new skills and about resources that will help us with our future goals. Our education and future careers are important to us-most of us attend mainstream high schools and some of us are in college.
The expressive arts classes at the YWP teach us to develop and use our creativity and communicate our inner thoughts and feelings through a variety of mediums (paint, markers, colored pencils, beads, music/songwriting, drama). As we work on our projects, either individually or collectively depending on the type of class, we share ideas about the project and help each other. This often leads to discussion of other topics of mutual interest. Our instructors engage us in discussion regarding what our artwork represents, and our thoughts and feelings as we were creating it. We learn from each other's insights and that many of us have similar feelings, which is very helpful. Many of us listen to music, dance, draw, paint and write on our own when we are going through difficult times in our lives. These artistic outlets help to comfort and support us in addition to emotional support from family and friends. Many of us require hospitalizations for surgery or medical conditions and draw, paint and write either on our own or with our therapists, which helps us to deal with what is going on.
We like to do art in school, at the YWP and at home. We like to do planned art projects in school and the YWP which exposes us to new ideas and mediums and then our own art at home using the mediums available. The YWP always allows us to have artistic freedom and encourages us to create no matter what. Many of us are interested and do take expressive arts classes at outside institutions (beading, drawing, dancing) to further our skills and opportunities. Art allows us to express ourselves like nothing else can. Whether we are painting, drawing, working with clay, beading, writing poetry or in our journals or singing to our favorite songs; it make us feel like we have a voice. There are many feelings we experience when we do art, which is what is so great about it; feelings of happiness, fulfillment, creativity, freedom as well as sadness, anger, uncertainly, loneliness and fear.
We all seem to like bright colors and painting things in nature: flowers, the sky, sun, moon, stars, ocean, gardens. We like to try different artistic modalities which the YWP certainly offers to us. We have done beading, pouch making, clay, painting, singing/songwriting, dancing, drama, creative writing, mobile making, masquerade mask-making. Many of the things we create we like to give to our family and friends as gifts.
