Out of the Organized Comfort Zone
Getting out of your comfort zone:
How I created a workshop on mental health and arts to challenge others and how it ended up challenging me
It was unexpected that I received an invitation from the African Student Community – ASC – to participate in their week of Mental Health and Well-Being RELEARN to give a workshop relating the topic with art. The connections between the two came at ease, smoothly and naturally in my mind. As an art student, it seems obvious to me that art contributes to your well-being. Besides, speaking in public was within my comfort zone. Everything would be fine.
To decide on the specific topic, it only sufficed to look at my desk and see the book I was “reading” – doing would be a better fitting verb for this particular book. Mess by Keri Smith guided my thoughts. In this book, the author proposed a series of activities for the reader to learn how to deal with mistakes. These activities range from drawing a line on the page to leaving the book on the rain so it gets wet. Thus, the workshop ended up dealing with questions of control and freedom, managing accidents and the unforeseen, mess, and the role of art in it all. My goal was to make people question their attitudes towards this unpredictability of our environment and our need to control everything. I wanted to challenge their assumptions on how to manage life’s accidents – not with cold blood, but with a lot of artistic vulnerability.
In the end, I was the one who was challenged by my own assumptions.
As always, people, the situation, accidents and mess surprised me. During the preparation and this whole experience, a lot had happened that came as a slap on the face to make me reflect on what I was telling the people in front of me. As a person who loves control and is also slowly learning how to deal with it all, I was not ready.
For starters, I lost control of the whole situation and things happened regardless of my organization and planning. I was ready to give a workshop for about twenty people that would be in the same room as me. I had prepared a protocol to keep distance and maintain things hygienic as they should be. I had designed the activities around group works and collaborations. It all went downhill when we had to refashion it to an online platform. My planning, my lists, my program… It was time for a quick adaptation. And you know what? It was scary. It was stressful. I was frustrated. And I complained. Only after to realize how ironic the situation was. I couldn’t control my environment and there I was, trying to have everything under my control, because that was my comfort zone.
As always, people, the situation, accidents and mess surprised me. During the preparation and this whole experience, a lot had happened that came as a slap on the face to make me reflect on what I was telling the people in front of me. As a person who loves control and is also slowly learning how to deal with it all, I was not ready.
For starters, I lost control of the whole situation and things happened regardless of my organization and planning. I was ready to give a workshop for about twenty people that would be in the same room as me. I had prepared a protocol to keep distance and maintain things hygienic as they should be. I had designed the activities around group works and collaborations. It all went downhill when we had to refashion it to an online platform. My planning, my lists, my program… It was time for a quick adaptation. And you know what? It was scary. It was stressful. I was frustrated. And I complained. Only after to realize how ironic the situation was. I couldn’t control my environment and there I was, trying to have everything under my control.
During the workshop, people also surprised me. Their creations and the concepts behind their works of art were something I could not have guessed. When I asked the question on their thoughts about the function of art, I was happy to discover that it is not only art students who wonder about these questions. When I saw the materials they were using, I was in awe of their adaptability. A bookmark that I had prepared to promote the magazine became a message on a bottle to be thrown in the sea; and when no artistic supply was around, they used soil, leaves, sand and whatever was there to find. Furthermore, when I challenged them to show and talk about their artwork, people were brave. They talked about their ideas and difficulties, about their personal motivations or just about the randomness of their work, shamelessly, showing me that the courage to be vulnerable in front of others is within us, we just need to let it out.
This whole workshop experience reminded me – or rather threw right into my face – that I still have so much to learn from others, and when you least expect, the lessons are there. It showed me that I still have a long way to go on this dealing-with-control thing, but it is only by getting out of my planned and organized comfort zone that I will be able to grow. And I hope I offered something to those people in the workshop, just as they offered me because I was incredibly happy to see that nothing had turned out the way I was expecting it to be.
During the workshop, people also surprised me. Their creations and the concepts behind their works of art were something I could not have guessed. When I asked the question on their thoughts about the function of art, I was happy to discover that it is not only art students who wonder about these questions. When I saw the materials they were using, I was in awe of their adaptability. A bookmark that I had prepared to promote the magazine became a message on a bottle to be thrown in the sea; and when no artistic supply was around, they used soil, leaves, sand and whatever was there to find. Furthermore, when I challenged them to show and talk about their artwork, people were brave. They talked about their ideas and difficulties, about their personal motivations or just about the randomness of their work, shamelessly, showing me that the courage to be vulnerable in front of others is within us, we just need to let it out.
This whole workshop experience reminded me – or rather threw right into my face – that I still have so much to learn from others, and when you least expect, the lessons are there. It showed me that I still have a long way to go on this dealing-with-control thing, but it is only by getting out of my planned and organized comfort zone that I will be able to grow. And I hope I offered something to those people in the workshop, just as they offered me because I was incredibly happy to see that nothing had turned out the way I was expecting it to be.
