inhabiting the uninhabitable: the use of art-making with teachers in southwest kosovo

Inhabiting the uninhabitable: the use of art-making withteachers in Southwest Kosovo

Debra Kalmanowitz, MA, RATh, Bobby Lloyd, DipFA, DipAT, RATh*The Art Therapy Initiative (ATI), London EC1V 4JT, U.K.

Introduction

In the following article, we attempt to analyze therole of The Art Therapy Initiative (ATI)’s art therapyproject in Kosovo and to consider its merit. We beginby presenting ATI’s project through two case presen-tations from the two art therapy teams who carriedout the work. Then, we step back a little to providesome context - historical, educational, socio-politicaland cultural - before moving onto our discussion anda conclusion.

Team one: November through December 1999

As we walked the rutted lane towards the schoolfor our first meeting with the teachers, we were metby a wave of silent children moving towards thecenter of Decan. The head came to us explaining thatthe students had gathered together in what seemed tous like an impromptu wake for those who were stillmissing. We felt like intruders in a community ex-pressing a very personal anger and grief. The fate ofhundreds of men and boys was still unknown, whilemany were still being held in Serb prisons. ‘Thehomeless dead,’ to borrow a phrase from Isabel Men-zies Lyth (1989), perhaps best describes what seemedto us the uncertainty and distress caused by theunknowing. The grief and anger seemed to be heldalive in a way that impeded a moving on.

The secondary school was central to the commu-nity and in some ways seemed more intact than thesurrounding environment. However, the interior ech-

oed an emptiness and dereliction that belied the ex-ternal appearance. It was a school that had been leftuntil last in the distribution of aid possibly becausethe outer shell remained intact.

It felt insensitive for us to go ahead with thepreplanned meeting with the teachers but the headinsisted that we stay. In hindsight we came to under-stand that the rawness of the moment needed to beheld and perhaps our presence was an important partof this.

There seemed to be a great deal of confusion, withthe teachers drifting into the meeting and it soonbecame clear that there was little understandingabout why we were in the school. The head wasnoticeably absent, leaving us with about 15 teachers.In the initial moments of the silence there was anoverwhelming sense of rage and frustration whichquickly became focused on the demand for computerswhich we could not provide.

As we struggled to contain the fragmenting meet-ing under an increasing barrage of demands, ourinterpreter became swept into the chaos and unableto translate coherently. We became excluded as shebecame the focus of their rage and later she told usthat she had been told by the teachers not to trans-late. Her position of being a young inexperiencedfemale in a comparatively highly paid job provokedoutrage in the teachers still awaiting the promisedstipend. Our position as British females and repre-sentatives of the Non-Government Organization(NGO) community which provided materials for re-building left them in an impossible paradox. After thepoignant march which we had just witnessed itseemed that such concrete needs became a way ofvoicing the intangible loss. Having vented their an-ger, several men left the group.

* Email: [email protected] (D. Kalmonowitzand B. Lloyd).

The Arts in Psychotherapy 29 (2002) 41–52

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The teachers wanted us to understand how diffi-cult it was for them to be both teachers and parentswhile trying to deal with their own losses. Thereseemed to be an anxiety that we would ask too muchof them. They pointed to their need to express sym-bols of hope, drawing our attention to the fragility ofthe group and their need to preserve their sense ofidentity and belief in a better future.

At the end of this initial meeting we were left withan anxiety about whether the group would actuallytake place and whether we could create the ‘potentialspace’ in face of such overwhelming basic need. Wewere also aware of the difficulties in managing thetightrope between training and therapy in this con-text. Throwing our concerns into sharp relief, a bombwas found in the basement of the building later thatweek and the school was temporarily evacuated.

Arriving at the school the following week we weremet by the smiling art teacher Uke who presented uswith two lists of twelve teachers who would be at-tending the groups. On showing us around the schoolto find a suitable room it seemed that he had taken ona supporting role and a faith in the training we hadpresented. Perhaps he felt it would also help to re-establish and value the role of creativity in the schoolwhich itself had necessarily and solely become con-cerned with survival.

Inside the building it was freezing, the window-panes were smashed and there was no heating. As wesearched for a suitable room we were struck by howlittle had indeed been left. While most of the roomswere small and derelict, the library—despite beingempty of books—occupied a central place in theschool. It seemed a site for repair that we cohabitedwith the builders. Ignoring the broken windows andfurniture we created a space around an old piece ofcarpet at one end of the room.

In our first session the women in particular told ushow nervous they were about making art, and inresponse we introduced themes which were universaland symbolic. Starting with only basic materials andasking people to work in pairs, individuals seemed tobecome more confident. As the session progressed, asense of playfulness unfolded and most of the teach-ers wanted to show us their pictures - many depictingbridges and their physical surroundings. We latersuggested that they make a picture of somethingimportant to them.

The physics teacher, one of the older and alsomore anxious members of the group, used a singlecolor. What emerged from the tentative marks on thepaper was a man running. He seemed unsure if it wasaway from or towards something but the red he usedreminded him of the Kosovan flag. The image madeus think of the wider confusion and uncertainty thatexisted in Kosovo during the immediate aftermath of

the recent conflict. It also suggested to us a possibleambivalence in attending.

One of the young female teachers said that themeaning of her name was embodied in the picture shehad drawn (see Fig. 1). She said that the flower wasalive and growing but needed water and sun. She toldus that this was the first time she had laughed inmany months and asked if her sister, also a teacher,could join the training from another school.

The following day none of the second group ar-rived. By contrast, the first group became one oftwelve consistent members who began to own andprotect their space. We extended the range of artmaterials and length of time for working on images,but retained the use of themes. A week later as we satwaiting to go up to the school, Uke found us in thelocal cafe and told us that the group was cancelledthat day and everyone had been sent home. Floorswere being laid and furniture was arriving and therewas no room for the group to take place. As we wereleaving Decan we were met by the rest of the teacherswho had been waiting patiently for us in the schoolbuilding, unaware of what Uke had said.

Our last group in the library seemed so different.One thousand desks had been delivered to the school,most of which seemed to have been stored in thisroom. The floor and windowpanes had been re-placed; we no longer scrunched across broken glass.It was warmer, but where was our old piece of car-pet? Maybe we no longer needed it. It was not untilthis last group that there was a sense of reality andnow perhaps the past could begin to emerge. Themost hesitant couple now made a small pencil draw-ing showing a table laid with a bowl of fruit and anunlit lamp (see Fig. 2). They had wanted to drawpeople around the table but said that they could notas they did not know when the son would return.

Ati’s Kosovo project

ATI’s Project in Kosovo took place betweenOctober 1999 and March 2000 in schools in thetowns and surrounding villages of Peja, Decan, andGjakova in South West Kosovo (see Fig. 3). ATI’sproject trained teachers—across subject matter—inthe sensitive approach to images and art in the class-room. ATI’s work, which is firmly based in art mak-ing, took a variety of forms in Kosovo: experientialgroups, application and supervision. Work with theteachers aimed at reinforcing their capacity to use artwith sensitivity, awareness and confidence so as tosupport their students. In addition, and crucially, theproject supported teachers in their own right.

Beyond training teachers in the sensitive use of art

42 D. Kalmanowitz, B. Lloyd / The Arts in Psychotherapy 29 (2002) 41–52

in their classrooms, the art therapists were required totake time to look at those students’ images whichteachers found particularly disturbing or puzzling. Inaddition, ATI art therapists were required to docu-

ment in detail all work carried out as well as under-take local research. They worked at all times as ateam of two so that peer supervision while in Kosovoformed an integral part of the work. Each team was

Fig. 1. The Flower, Decan Secondary School.

Fig. 2. Pencil drawing, Decan Secondary School.

43D. Kalmanowitz, B. Lloyd / The Arts in Psychotherapy 29 (2002) 41–52

required to attend a pretraining in London and, upontheir return to London, undergo a de-briefing.

The sharing by teachers of their professionalknowledge and skills was essential to this trainingand the art therapists worked to build upon teachers’already existing strengths and knowledge. This shorttraining did not provide qualifications to practice asart therapists.

The project was structured in two separate sixweek blocks of time with a two month break inbetween so as to allow teachers the opportunity forsome internalizing of experience and learning fromwork begun by the first team.

ATI’s art therapists had prior experience workingin the context of trauma and post-traumatic stressdisorder (PTSD). The training work with Kosovanteachers was underpinned by this knowledge and an

understanding of the prevalence of stress responses.This was incorporated proactively only where appro-priate, while the training program itself did not in-clude this directly in its teaching.

ATI worked in close association with Save theChildren Fund (SCF)’s Peja, Decan, and Gjakovaoffices and in addition communicated regularly withlocal education authorities, United Nations Interna-tional Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and those fewNGO’s (national and international) involved in usingthe arts in mental health in the specified locations.This was so as to ensure that ATI’s program wasappropriate and to avoid duplication, and to maxi-mize the potential for sustainability through co-ordi-nation and, where appropriate, interagency collabo-ration.

Fig. 3. Map of South West Kosovo.


Team two: February through March 2000

When we entered the library, the bibliotek, ofDecan Secondary School for the first time we werestruck by the ordered ranks of Scandinavian furniturewhich seemed to emphasize the bareness of the walls.It was cold but the windows had been replaced (seeFig. 4). We were nervous. It was clear from ourconversation with the headteacher and Uke that thefirst team had made an impression and we felt underscrutiny. What could we offer? The openness andfriendliness of the teachers reassured us. This wasthe same group that had formed a cohesive unit inOctober and November and there was a sense thatthey had been ‘waiting’ to develop work further. Ukehad shown us the carefully stored images, often ofmountains, rivers and bridges. It was only twomonths later but so much had changed from the raw,jagged need of the emergency response.

During the interim visit made by ATI’s directorsin January, before our arrival, the headteacher hadmade a strong plea for a group for older studentswithin the school. A smaller representative grouphad been present at the meeting as well as the artteacher. The latter described how he had been per-sonally moved by his experience of the first team’straining and spoke of reclaiming his personal belief

in the value of art as a means of healing. The valueof the training had begun to filter through to thestudents themselves who were desperately eager forlearning input, having been starved of external sup-port for their entire secondary schooling.

We agreed to work with a group of 14 to 15 yearold students in the hour before the teachers’ lunch-time session. Uke himself would be the bridge be-tween the two groups. We followed the practice ofusing themes. Between the teacher and studentgroups there were connections both conscious andunconscious and images echoed spontaneously. Ayoung girl, for example, drew herself as a baby birdthreatened by a fox, a woman teacher echoed thefeeling of helplessness as a mother bird unable toprotect her young.

Later, in the discussion with the teacher group,Uke spoke of how the parallel work with the studentshad helped him to learn so much about his studentsthat he would not have known. Uke had begun toreflect upon his own issues and needs and was there-fore, more available to the needs of his students. Heindicated that the first team’s work had facilitatedthis openness and ability for reflection.

At Lidlija e Prizrenib Primary School in Peja wewere met by quite different expectations on the partof the teachers. The first team had been unable tooffer training to teachers but had begun to build arelationship with the headteacher while the schoolwas being rebuilt and before its reopening in Decem-ber, 1999.

Our first experience of this school was being metby the headteacher who had been ‘waiting’ for thetime he could receive ATI’s input. We were struck bythis sense of waiting, of faith that we would arrive.This was made more poignant by the fact that we hadarrived at the school with no means of arranging anappointment. We returned later that day to speak tothe teachers who welcomed us with questions andinterest. The following week we arrived with our boxof paper and materials. Everyone separated intopairs, having been invited to make ‘a conversationwithout words.’

What arose from each pair within the group wasa powerful explosion of imagery that conveyedstarkly and painfully the events that occurred beforethe NATO bombing (both of us were aware that thefirst anniversary of this time was approaching). Withthe sensitivity of translation and witnessing we heardthe teachers’ stories. Each of them had lost some-thing irreplaceable, had members of their families inother parts of the world or some who were missing.

One image that we remembered vividly was madeby a group of three teachers. It illustrated the day ofMarch 28, 1999, the graphic imagery of war and

Fig. 4. Refurbished classroom, Decan Secondary School.


people fleeing Peja. It felt clear that they wanted usto know, witness and survive their stories.

Our next session was cancelled because the heat-ing had broken down, though we were touched thatthe headmaster made a special journey on a Saturdayto tell us this. The following week he met us, lookingstrained and tired and explained that because of thepressure to catch up with the curriculum targets wewould only have half an hour with the teachers, andin fact it might be the last session because of increas-ing pressure on his staff.

We had come across the recipe for salt dough inViolet Oaklander’s 1988 book ‘Windows to our Chil-dren’ and, realizing the paucity of art materials, itseemed to make sense where flour, water, salt and oilwere freely available (and in a slightly altered formbecame ‘burek’, the staple dish of Kosovo.) This wasto be the encore to our planned session but wasquickly transformed into the main event. We demon-strated the recipe and gave each teacher a smallpiece to feel the correct texture and to take away.

To our surprise they immediately began to ex-plore the material and within minutes had produceda range of flowers, animals and nests which theybegan decorating with the feltpens which were partof an earlier plan. Each member of the group becamecompletely and utterly absorbed in what they weredoing. A briefcase was discarded on the table and thegreatly revered new red class record books becamesomething to lean on. There was no embarrassmentor sense of being asked to do something childish; wehad not in fact asked them to do anything at all. Theteachers who had shared their experiences of deathand destruction the week before were now engaged inmolding the salt dough. They seemed to be findingthat creative space where the human spirit can findjoy in an immediate, instinctive response to a ball offlour, salt, oil, and water.

There was something alchemical and magicalabout the speed with which these small sculpturesemerged and salt is part of the ‘prima materia’ thatpreserves and transforms in alchemy. There was afrog on a lily pad, a rabbit with his own nourish-ment—a carrot, a small nest with eggs waiting fortheir own transformation (see Fig. 5). There was asense that perhaps some base metal had indeed beenturned into gold.

We asked the teachers to use this material withthe children if they had time. Returning the followingweek, the headmaster invited us for a coffee and thenthe door opened and one after another the teachersappeared with armfuls of salt dough animals, flowersand an assortment of figures, all of which had to beinspected individually (see Fig. 6).

The teachers were obviously delighted. We had areal sense that the teachers felt empowered by being

able to offer something like this to the children andthat their own sense of helplessness had been trans-formed in to pride in the children’s achievements.Some children came in and a little girl read out aspeech to thank us.

We were also shown some of the images the chil-dren had made of their experiences in the war (seeFig. 7). They were in stark contrast to the salt doughanimals and yet all these images and experiences arepart of the whole person—of pain and joy. “The mosthelpful discovery of today has been that right in themidst of my sorrows there is always room for joy. Joyand sorrow are sisters; they live in the same house”(Wiederkehr, 1990, p. 26).

Kosovo: some background

Understanding the socio-political history of thecountry within which we are working is always cen-tral to our work. In the context of Kosovo, the social,political and cultural reality clearly had a profoundimpact upon the teachers and children with whom wewere working.

Noel Malcolm begins his book Kosovo: a ShortHistory, published in 1998:

Fig. 5. Teacher’s salt dough, Peja Primary School.


“The Yugoslav crisis began in Kosovo, and it willend in Kosovo..” One can hear this saying repeated

almost anywhere in the former Yugoslavia; it is oneof the few things on which all parties to the conflictsof the 1990s seem to agree. No one knows how thestory will end in Kosovo (Malcolm, 1998, p. xxvii).

It is clearly not within the scope of this article todiscuss in any detail the complex and fascinatinghistory of the troubled, rich and unique province ofKosovo. Any further information is now readilyavailable as Kosovo has become well researched anddocumented in recent months.

Briefly, however, Kosovo is one of the two for-merly autonomous provinces within the former Yu-goslavia, holding special symbolic and historic sig-nificance for Kosovo Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.Both groups regard it as the cradle to their civiliza-tions. The well-documented acrimonious debate sur-rounding the area has focused on conflicting territo-rial claims and has divided the Serbs and Albaniansin Kosovo throughout the centuries. As a result of acombination of these disputes, repression, and geo-graphic isolation, Kosovo has become, with time,increasingly poor and isolated. The conflict in the1990s forms the most recent phase of this country’stroubled history, with the consolidation of SlobodanMilosevic’s power in 1987 culminating in large-scaleatrocities, the creation of tens of thousands of refu-gees and NATO’s intervention in June 1999.

In parallel with the closure of other institutionsunder Milosevic, the education system was virtually

Fig. 6. Child’s salt dough, Peja Primary School.

Fig. 7. Child’s image of burning buildings, Peja.


closed to the Albanian population by 1992—fromprimary to University levels. International pressureforced the reopening of the primary level classes butsecondary and university education remained inac-cessible. Those teachers who continued to follow theAlbanian curriculum faced arrest, interrogation, illtreatment, and imprisonment. By the end of 1992,there were 26,000 teachers that had been dismissed.

A parallel Albanian education system developedwith Albanian children attending ‘unofficial’ classesin private homes and any other premises that wereavailable. By 1994 this system reportedly served335,000 pupils taught by over 18,000 teachers. Dur-ing the 1990s, this parallel system was financedthrough a voluntary system of 3% taxation fromsalaries for those living abroad as well as thosewithin Kosovo. This supported the salaries of teach-ing and nonteaching staff.

Major disruptions took place within the parallelsystem from November 1997. In 1998 at least 500 outof about 12,000 teachers fled from Kosovo. In 1999,during the period of the NATO conflict, 213 pupilsand 68 teachers were killed. The New School Year of1999 through 2000, during which ATI’s project tookplace, began on a new note with Kosovo Albanianchildren returning to school and in most cases, theoriginal school building—despite the previous tenyears and the current devastation of so much of theschool property and buildings.

The parallel system suffered for ten years fromlack of adequate facilities as well as the most basicequipment such as chalk, blackboards, tables andchairs, library books, laboratory equipment and com-puters. Many qualified teachers left the country andwere replaced by the underqualified. The systemadopted survival mode for a decade. Crucially, mostKosovan Albanian teachers had been without in-ser-vice training for a minimum of 10 years.

In the West of Kosovo (including the towns andvillages in which ATI’s project took place) between40% and 60% of homes had been destroyed or badlydamaged. In addition, 70% of the schools in this areaneeded repair while 45% were seriously damaged ordestroyed (see Fig. 8).

Discussion

One of the basic human requirements is the needto dwell, and one of the central human acts is the actof inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however tem-porarily with a place on the planet which belongs tous, and to which we belong. This is not, especially inthe tumultuous present, an easy act, (as is attested bythe uninhabited and uninhabitable no-places in cities

everywhere), and it requires help: we need allies ininhabitation.

Fortunately, we have at hand many allies, if onlywe call on them; other upright objects, from towers tochimneys to columns, stand in for us in sympatheticimitation of our own upright stance. Flowers andgardens serve as testimonials to our own care, andbreezes loosely captured can connect us with the veryedge of the infinite.

(Charles Moore, in Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, 1977,Foreword)

These words reverberate for us throughout ourwork in the context of political conflict—as it takesus to towns, cities, and countries flattened and dev-astated by bombs and munitions and in which peopleremain and continue to live.

ATI’s work took place at a pivotal time in Koso-vo’s recent history. It spanned a period of transitionbetween emergency and long-term work. It alsospanned two years and indeed two centuries and twomillenia. For the Albanian population of Kosovo theyear 1999 was the year of the NATO conflict whilethe year 2000 brought new hope as the first year of‘freedom.’

In addition, an important backdrop to the workwas that, during ATI’s period in South West Kosovo,the international community was perceived to be es-

Fig. 8. Repair of school roof, Junik, near Decan.


sential but not, by definition, useful. Although theKosovan people generally welcomed NGO’s intotheir country with open arms, there was already adiscernible change in attitude towards major externalagencies and a certain skepticism about the contribu-tion of NGO’s overall. This was well illustrated whenthe first team were talking to SCF’s drivers andinterpreters who pointed out partly in a humorousway, but also with underlying frustration that thebridges and roofs were ‘imitation’—implying that thethings that NGO’s do are temporary, not authenticand ultimately ‘not real’.

Inhabiting the uninhabitable

Structuring an environment in which people canfeel emotionally safe is clearly a particular challengein a situation in which people are mostly living in‘no-places’. Many of the teachers with whom weworked were living with their extended family eitherin partially standing buildings with no running wateror electricity or in a tent on the plot of land on whichtheir house once stood (see Fig. 9). In this environ-ment, the teachers’ external and internal (emotional)reality often mirrored one another.

The challenge faced by ATI was clearly a com-plex one. Not only did we need to structure an envi-ronment which helped to facilitate the ability todwell, but we needed to use our skills as art therapists

to provide something for the teachers which wasauthentic and real, even though we had only recentlymet them, and despite our cultural differences.

In the above context, the art therapists needed towork to create an environment of art-making—basicto art therapy—in which the art provided for theteachers a richness that did not require virtuosity buta pure and playful enjoyment of the material. Oncethis was established, the teachers could then begin(through the art-making) to express and reflect upontheir own pain and loss resulting from their experi-ences.

For the first team who were working in the im-mediate aftermath of the conflict during the emer-gency phase of international support, the physicalrepair of the school building went hand in hand withthe making of art. The art-making took place in grim,freezing conditions. For the second team whose worktook place at the start of a more settled period inwhich longer-term planning was starting to be imple-mented, there was already a different mood. None ofus could have anticipated the speed with which thephysical environment would change—illustrated bythe headmaster’s sentiment that the group could nottake place within a room that did not have heating.

The first team spoke of the need for the external tobe physically habitable before there could be anyconnection between internal and external, beforethere could be emotional habitation. Only once the

Fig. 9. Tent in front garden, Peja.


Decan school had been refurbished could ‘a sense ofreality emerge.’

In this context it has been useful to look at theideas of Melinda Ashley Mayer (1998) who works asan expressive arts therapist with victims of war inmany different settings. In her work with Bosnianrefugees she has found it useful to use the house as ametaphor for the body, family, and society. When allfrontiers are invaded and the infra-structure is ‘blownapart’ these three houses are disintegrated. The hu-man being finds himself in a situation in which theway he previously perceived the world is turnedupside down. (In the case of Kosovo this was a verylong drawn out process.) The ‘walls’ of the househave literally fallen down and the old structures nowonly exist within the individual body. It is this indi-vidual body that has the opportunity—through whatMayer calls ‘play’—to be linked together with thehouse of the family and that of society, so as to builda ‘new house’ with new structures, return to the old,or do both.

Interestingly, with the new windows fitted and thebroken glass cleared away, the disappearance of thesmall scrap of carpet left the art therapists discon-certed. It was as if the scrap of carpet had given asymbolic focus to the training, enabling perhaps amemory of home as it had been, of the ability todwell. Once the building was refurbished and readyfor new beginnings, the art therapists seemed to beleft wondering with the teachers: what was ‘home’and can it be returned to, what is home and can thesebe linked together?

The right ‘to name the world’

Graham Fawcett (in Cavill, 2000), who took atraining program to Kosovo in 2000, speaks of theneed to identify ways to help people deal with theirproblems in their own way, rather than bringing out-siders in as ‘rescuers’. He writes:

I would like to see us moving towards facilitatingrefugee populations to recover the meaning of whathas happened to them so they have the energy tomove on, and begin the reconstruction process,rather than looking for individual healing or therapyin a group that don’t self-identify themselves astraumatized (Fawcett, in Cavill, 2000, p. 554).

The thoughts and work of the educationalist PaoloFriere (1970) on popular education are useful here inunderstanding the potential value of enabling teach-ers through experiential groups. He describes how insome countries the oppressors have used the educa-tion system to maintain a ‘culture of silence’. In hisseminal work, ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, Friere

(1970) discusses the relevance of avoiding authori-tarian teacher-pupil models, basing education on per-sonal experiences as well as continual shared inves-tigation. Friere proposes that, through this, a peasantcan facilitate the process of learning for his or herneighbor more effectively than a ‘teacher’ brought infrom outside. Each human being can develop a newawareness of self that will free him or her to be morethan passive objects responding to uncontrollablechange. Each individual wins back the right to say hisor her own word, ‘to name the world’ (p. 69).

War not only destroys homes and family struc-tures but invariably also destroys social constructsincluding hospital services, education systems,schools, effective law-keeping, the value of the localcurrency and so on. Support systems—includingfamily and friends—that were once taken for grantedin a functioning society are often no longer present.

One way in which we could understand our role inoffering a training was as ‘allies’ to the teachers. In away, we hoped to stand ‘temporarily alongside’them. Teachers were disempowered and absorbed bytheir own strong emotions and reactions to their ex-periences and loss. In addition they were now‘forced’ to witness equally strong emotions amongtheir students. As a result of this, many of the teach-ers were overwhelmed, making both teaching andemotional support of their students difficult, if not attimes impossible. With so many structures destroyed(individual, familial, and societal), teachers had fewplaces to turn to for support or referral.

The art therapists were continuously faced withchaos and destruction, a society itself lacking formand direction. At times they were also faced with rawanger and aggression. The four art therapists werenecessarily responding to the pulls and constant de-mands of the other humanitarian aid organizations aswell as the inhabitants of the towns they were work-ing in. There appears to have been a very natural andreal fear of the unknown in a country still so volatile,destroyed and emotionally raw. In light of this, theconsistent use the two teams made of themes hasbeen interesting to consider.

For ATI’s project to be effective it was essentialthat the art therapists remain focused and that,through supervision, were regularly reminded ofwhat they could do, responding to teachers’ needswhile resisting the temptation to spread themselvestoo thin.

Art-making

In the mid 1990s we had developed the concept of‘the portable studio’ which we used as one suchsupervision tool:


What we aimed to create was what we called aportable studio. This is based on the premise that theinternal structure we carried with us as art therapistscould allow for work to physically take place insideand outside: in the bedroom, in the dining room, onthe hill, in the town dump.

This internal structure involved a consciousawareness and sensitivity to the art, the art-makingand its ability to provide a form which can containthe individual’s experience; a trust in the individualas possessing resources rather than as a helplessvictim in which the therapist alone holds the solu-tions; an understanding that images potentially holdmultiple meanings and that the therapist, in her ac-tive alertness (Learmonth, 1994), holds this potenti-ality. This structure could provide an environmentwhich facilitated expression, and allowed for sus-tained immersion (McNiff, 1992) in the art-making.It was up to us as art therapists to support eachindividual in negotiating a way through a complexweb, and in realizing that through their own expe-rience, strengths and culture they have some power.

. . . A main objective was to be responsible toourselves as professionals and to the individualswith whom we were working. These responsibilitieswere acute awareness of the context, of the timeframe, of the level of vulnerability of the individu-als, of the healthy elements, and an in-depth under-standing and respect for the art process.

‘Following on from this, by developing the por-table studio it is possible to consider creating a spacein diverse situations within which individuals canfoster their collective capacities for endurance andsurvival.’ (Kalmanowitz & Lloyd, 1998, p. 24).

Once the teachers had begun to dwell, thereseemed to be a drive by participants of both teams’training to make art and perhaps through this to beginto regain meaning so as to carry on.

By the time of the second training teachers couldbegin more readily to connect internal with external.In the example of the salt dough, the second teamdescribes how it provided not only a pure enjoymentof a material and the possibility of a very ordinaryexpression that was not about war and destruction,but it also seemed to them to offer space for a moreprofound experience, for something they describe as‘alchemical’. In a reality in which printed moneybecame scrap paper it did seem strangely possiblethat in this brief moment in time the combination ofsalt, water and flour that is salt dough could be turnedinto gold.

But more significantly perhaps, the second teamwere moved by the ability of the children to make,alongside their images of devastation and war, im-ages that were more to do with the ‘magical’: “Joyand sorrow are sisters; they live in the same house”(Wiederkehr, 1990, p. 26). Steven Levine writes:

The therapeutic power of art lies in its capacity torender life valuable by showing both its horror andits pity. If we hold fast to this task, we may beblessed with the presence of joy (Levine, 1992, p.121)

Mayer (1998) amplifies this idea: she describeshow art can indeed contain both the ‘ugly’ and the‘beauty’. She goes on to refer to the way in which anindividual’s resources in the past may be connectedto the present and brought into the future, enablingthe ‘void’ between to begin to mend. She speaks ofthe survivor of war being able to discover the beautythat can emerge through the art-making and that also‘lies in the ruins’, and to face and give expression tothe truth. In ‘truth’, both ugliness and beauty livewithin the shadow of each other. The art gives thehuman being the possibility to ‘live with the truth andat the same time stay home in the body’.

Conclusion

Clearly, nothing can compensate for the enormityof loss and trauma experienced by populations whohave lived through situations of political conflict andwar, have been tortured, imprisoned or displaced,experienced separation, loss, instability and disrup-tion to day-to-day routines, and reflective work is nosubstitute for practical support. It is our experiencehowever that people who have lived through violenceand conflict, who have lost family, homes and theirlife as they knew it are often eager to reclaim whatthey can on all levels.

It appears that ATI’s art therapists - as represen-tatives of the wider world - were helping to break theisolation of the previous ten years experienced by theteachers.

Importantly, children and adolescents accountedfor (and continue to account for) the highest propor-tion of the population. Within this context, work inschools was becoming particularly pertinent asschool is the one normalizing structure in whichchildren and adolescents meet on a regular, if daily,basis. It is because of the former that many difficul-ties come to the fore within the context of education.[This is supported by other humanitarian aid organi-zations working in Kosovo (SCF, UNICEF, WarChild, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF)].

The school structure is considered a protectivefactor for children, as is a stable and caring relation-ship between children and their care-givers. Withinthis, the relationship between children and theirteachers becomes very important and may form anessential part of the protective factors against thesevere experiences of conflict or war. Much researchhas shown that children whose care-givers are able to


continue to care for them have a greater chance ofcoping with the difficulties and chaos resulting fromwar. Sadly some caregivers are suffering with theirown loss and pain and are sometimes not able to beemotionally available for the children in their care. Inthis context the school becomes the next most im-portant structure for the child. Indeed, within thecontext of school, we noted the particular strength ofrelationship between teachers and children.

In our initial meetings the teachers raised a con-cern that they did not know what to do with theimages they were often faced with, made by childrenduring the school day. Crucially, we discovered thatthe introduction of the use of art as a way of comingto terms with their experience (both students andteachers) was uncontested and readily acknowledgedas helpful in aiding children to move forward. Thiswas in direct contrast to a culture in which expressionis not necessarily encouraged in the belief that if it isnot said, it will eventually go away.

Participants of ATI’s project in Kosovo were in-vited to complete Evaluations at the end of theirtraining. The results of these support our originalpremise that once teachers had been given a time anda space in which to express their own loss, anger andsadness, tools could be provided which teacherscould then use with young people and which could besustainable.

The tools ATI began to provide for teachers in-cluded an awareness of the benefits of self-expres-sion; listening and group-work skills; the value oflearning from colleagues and from personal experi-ence; relationships developing between teachers,serving as a valuable support; a sensitivity to the useof art materials and response to images made; theability to recognize a child in distress; the ability notto be overwhelmed but to note and think objectivelyabout what has been or is being witnessed; the abilityto acknowledge limits and work within these ratherthan attempt to work beyond them.

On one level the teachers were happy to engage inwork while on another to be any more open would betoo overwhelming. The teachers needed to know thatthey could build on their strategies for coping andmoving on rather than fear that these would be re-moved.

In many cases the teachers had already been pro-viding sensitive responses to the expressive, at timespainful and often hard-to-witness art-work of theyoung people with whom they were working. Theyhad been asking for confidence-building through hav-

ing a structure and understanding of the processes ofart as a therapeutic means of helping people. Theonly way they could have this understanding was bydoing art themselves.

Acknowledgments

This work was carried out by ATI in associationwith Save the Children Fund in London and Kosovo.It was funded by the British Department for Interna-tional Development (DFID).

The authors acknowledge the four British regis-tered art therapists who carried out the direct work inKosovo and whose case studies are pivotal in thetext: Team One: Sarah Beagley, B.A. (Hons), DipATh and Fran Miller, Dip ATh; Team Two: AnnaKalin, B. Ed. (Hons), Dip ATh and Julie Murphy,M.A. (Hons), Dip ATh.

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inhabiting the uninhabitable: the use of art-making with teachers in southwest kosovo

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