Healing Trauma with Art and the Affective Turn

Trauma lives in the body and is passed on unless it is confronted, creating an opportunity for the body to heal. Art in education spaces can provide opportunities for such healing because of the body’s spontaneous response to art. If we can learn to sit in the pain, shame, fear, and deeply personal responses that trouble the body, the body becomes a tool for listening, learning, healing, and growing. By applying affect theory to art, we are able to access difficult content and open up discourse around self-love, community building, and restitution. This pivot point, the affective turn, is the moment when healing emerges.