Finding Common Ground Through Art Therapy

Tyler Strusowski was working at a youth center in South Africa when he realized why he had chosen his new career path: the understanding that “creativity is limitless in its possibilities.”

“Mostly, I worked with people in their late teens and 20s who spoke English, but we would have mornings where we had an open  studio and local children would show up,” says Strusowski, a George Washington University (GWU) graduate student who was taking part in a three-week study abroad trip. “It became clear within a few minutes that these children didn’t speak English at all, and at first, I didn’t know what to do.”

Standing in that studio at the Bokamoso Youth Centre, Strusowski says he realized quickly that the best way to find common  ground with the kids was through the visual arts.

“Once I let go of trying to talk and hoping they could understand, I just sat down next to the kids and started doing the same work they were doing,” he says. “I would lead by example, drawing a flower or illustrating a bird, and that’s when I came to understand that art really is a form of communication.”

Strusowski’s realization, that “imagery truly is a universal language,” is a fundamental tenet of art therapy, a fast-growing but still relatively new practice around the world. The first graduate-level programs—nearly all in the visual arts—weren’t developed until the early 1970s in the United States and Britain, the two countries where the discipline was defined and developed