Source: Liebman, M. Art therapy for groups.
Materials: paper, choice of drawing utensils
Procedure: 1. Each person starts with one piece of paper. 2. Ask participants to think of something beautiful and find a way to represent it with the art materials in a short amount of time (2-3 minutes). 3. Ask each person to pass his/her drawing to the right. 4. Ask the new owners of the drawings to notice the beauty of the picture. Then tell them to ask permission from the artist to mess up the picture. 5. The new owner finds a way to make the original picture less beautiful, or ugly. 6. Next the picture is handed back to its original owner. The owner must find a way to make the picture beautiful once again.
Processing questions: Describe the changes that this picture has undergone. How did you make it beautiful again? What emotions did you experience during this intervention? Can you think of an example of a time in your life when someone made a mess of something you had worked hard to "make beautiful"? What did you do to make it beautiful again? Did anything positive come from the mess up?
Rationale: to stimulate a discussion about creative problem solving, to bring light to the positives that a negative situation can bring
