The term 'empathy' suggests the ability to feel other people’s feelings and to be able to walk in their shoes. A person with empathy can appreciate, understand or feel someone else’s experience from their perspective. Our failure to understand other people’s feelings or opinions can exacerbate prejudice, conflict, and inequality. What happens to empathy when we fail to separate the person from their viewpoint?

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The ‘Empathy Through Art’ workshops engage opposing perspectives by viewing and making art. How?

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WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:

Through storytelling and visual narratives (painting, drawing, film): feeling and understanding can be evoked by viewing or listening to an artwork in common or by making and sharing one.

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The series has three workshops.
- Each workshop focuses on one of the three types of empathy (cognitive, emotional, compassionate).
- The types of empathy are explained.
- Are then paired with three related art styles (Cubism, Abstraction, Street Art).
- Art styles are themselves studied.

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Cognitive Empathy – explored through Cubism
- Cubism is an art style that explores multiple perspectives in one artwork.
- Cognitive empathy means understanding others’ perspectives.

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Emotional Empathy – explored through Abstraction
- Abstraction expresses feelings through nonfigurative art.
- Emotional empathy means experiencing what another person is feeling.

 

Compassionate Empathy – explored through Street Art
- Street Art comments on various social, political or economic aspects of life.
- Compassionate empathy means having consideration for the plight of others.

 

Participants engage in a slow looking exercise – Describing what is seen and what thoughts or feelings are evoked.

- Select key words from the experience in haiku form.
- Express the meaning of that ‘poem’ in an artwork.
- Collage, drawing with pastel, and shadow box sculptures are favorite media for this series.