Case report, case study
A Beam of Light in the Darkness Safe Space Open studio: An Art-Based Community Intervention in a Shared Traumatic Reality
Michal Ulitzur-Zemel
orcid.org/0009-0006-3849-0078
; David Yellin College, Jerusalem
Gali Borman
; David Yellin College, Jerusalem
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
A massive terrorist attack that occurred in Israel on October 7th 2023.
undermined feelings of security and trust that resulted in an experience
of abandonment and collapse. The forced evacuation of tens of thousands
from their homes for a long period of uncertainty, required the immediate
construction of therapeutic interventions. One of them, led by art therapists,
was the establishment of dozens of ‘Safe Studios’, a unique model of the Open
Studio, designed to provide initial emotional support to displaced communities.*
This article seeks to describe the unique qualities that the Safe Studio enabled as
an art-based community intervention in circumstances of a collective, ongoing
and shared trauma. We will dwell on the ways in which the abnormal reality
affected the processes that took place in the studio, between and among the two
groups that took part in it - an evacuee community and a group of art therapists.
We will propose that the Safe Studio embodied aspects of a transitional space
(Winnicott, 1971) as well as a liminal space (Turner, 1969), and as such,
allowed contact with the feelings of detachment and transience as well as with
the potential to transform them towards a renewed connection with personal
and communal strengths and resources. The studio released from feelings of
stagnation and helplessness, regulating emotional excesses and overload, protected from their destructive influence and nourished the triangular relation
of art-therapists-community. The creation of aesthetic objects spurred action
and emotional involvement, restored vitality and meaning, trust in the good
object (Klein, 1937) and in the possibility of recovery and growth.
Keywords
safe studio; transitional space; liminal space
Hrčak ID:
327416
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2024.
Visits: 1.013 *