At the beginning of May 2023, the last transnational partner meeting of the ARTY project was held in Bucharest, Romania. “Digital art therapy for youth with developing or existing mental health conditions”, better known as ARTY, is a 24-month project funded by the European Erasmus+ programme. During the two years of ARTY’s life, the Consortium has intensively collaborated in the development of training and awareness-raising resources aimed especially at professionals working with adolescents, in order to provide them with the knowledge and skills necessary to impact on the complex reality that young people affected by the Covid19 pandemic are experiencing using digital art techniques. Will the ARTY project partners have succeeded in their aim?
On 4th and 5th May 2023, the Erasmus+ ARTY project partnership met for the last time in person in Bucharest, Romania. This was an opportunity to work on the last but not least important tasks in view of the end of the ARTY project scheduled for July 2023, but not only! The second day of the partners’ meeting was dedicated to the final conference of the project, organised by the Romanian project coordinator partner, ESTUAR, at the Parliament Hotel in Bucharest. The event was attended by the project partners as well as around 30 professionals who, in various professional roles, were interested in the ARTY project and its results. Indeed, the aim of the conference was to inform participants about the concrete results developed and achieved over the past three years by the ARTY partnership. After a brief presentation of the project and partners, the conference continued by introducing interested parties in depth to the ARTY methodological guide, training course and toolkits, resources that will soon be available free of charge online on the project website at https://artyproject.eu/downloads/.
These are innovative materials developed by the consortium aimed at organisations and all professionals working with adolescents affected by the Covid19 pandemic with a twofold objective. Firstly, to provide and/or improve professionals’ knowledge and skills in digital art techniques in working with adolescents in order to ensure continuity of interventions even in future mobility restrictions or social distancing. Secondly, the ARTY awareness-raising toolkits on the impact of COVID-19 on young people with developing or existing mental health conditions intend to shake civil and political consciences on the issue of mental health of young people affected by the pandemic, providing policy recommendations to be able to curb and more effectively impact the emotional, relational, cognitive effects of Covid19 on adolescents. In addition to raising participants’ awareness of the concrete results developed and achieved by the consortium, the final ARTY conference was a valuable opportunity to exchange experiences and opinions between different European realities, with the aim of promoting the use of ARTY resources by practitioners, especially after the official conclusion of the project. This is what we in the ARTY partnership hope, that the results achieved and materials developed so far will be used, personalised and further improved because the ARTY project has been able to open up many paths, but the most fruitful ones only open up if you keep walking…
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