UISG, for its third year, organizes the event, Art for Our Sanity, to raise awareness and engagement with the global issue of mental health, mental fitness, and well-being. Art for Our Sanity is a series of events that revolve around the central idea, “Artistic expression and communication can restore our well-being.” This event lasted from January 22 to February 6, 2024, at the Secondary Building Atrium, Utahloy International School in Guangzhou.

It started as a unit in Year 9 MYP Visual Arts, and it’s been dedicated as a Service as Action (SA) unit, collaborating with Ms. Frederique, SA Coordinator. This year, students learned about various painting techniques, developed them, and created a finished painting as their summative task, which expresses or communicates to improve their well-being or others. Students were encouraged to take more initiative in suggesting ideas and planning this time. Three Year 9 students Daisy Fu, Jethro Tan, and Isabella Wu volunteered to lead the project this year.

This event was also greatly supported by Ms. Maria and Ms. Remy from the Student Learning Support Department. There were seminars with a licensed therapist as the guest speaker, Mr. Du Pengkun, who talked to students about stress management and self-care. The Learning Support department previously conducted a pre-survey to collect questions students have about mental health. This enabled Mr. Du to tailor his speech to address the specific areas of interest and curiosity of our students.

We also exhibited our collaborative artwork, to which many of the community members contributed. A week before the exhibition, students and staff drew and created marks on small pieces of drawing and painting to advocate for the significance of this issue. The student volunteers then assembled by sewing and clipping together all the art pieces to create two installation pieces, which were then displayed in the center of the exhibition.

Hopefully, through this event, the community can be reminded of the importance of self-care while completing many tasks and assignments. They could also learn from the opportunity to use art, whether drawing, painting, music, poetry, or acting, as a channel to improve their mental health, mental fitness, and well-being.

ベニー・カリスマナ
MYP/DP Visual Arts teacher
Head of Visual Arts (K-12)