May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I would love to make you aware of a non-profit that I’ve been working with that marries the arts and emotional literacy. Emotion Literacy Advocates creates and produces arts-based learning tools and self-reflective writing programs to promote emotion literacy.
Emotion Literacy Advocates was born in 1992 in Seattle through one of Pamela’s theatrical monologue workshops, alongside her first book of rhythmic prose. Her work as an artist to advocate for emotion literacy found its way further into academic and social service communities in the Northwest, Canada and even Mexico. She continues to serve as a teaching artist and guest author in high schools, universities, and performance venues. Emotion Literacy Advocates was formed to foster collaboration with artists, community partners, and social change educators to better communicate with our inside and outside world.
Since both of us have a love for the arts, we hit it off immediately. The project that she needed help with was a way to personalize her website imagery. We talked about creating original artwork that she already had from another artist and turning it into a digital piece that can be used for website banners and icons. I was able to create several combinations of the original watercolor artwork and some new elements to something that fit their branding perfectly.
Pamela was nice enough to say this about our partnership:
“Eileen is a gem. She is a wonderful artist with an impressive range of sense-abilities that makes her quite versatile. She created new images for us, as well as lending her talents to images we already had that needed adjustment and she did a grand job on all of the above. She offered an astute perspective as we assessed our web site needs and I hope to continue working with her as we fine-tune Emotion Literacy Advocates’ online presence.”
Pamela was also kind enough to even give me some pointers on self care and terminology for my podcast! I LOVED working with Pamela on such a creative project. She was incredibly informative and very receptive to ideas! I hope to continue my work with her. I would highly recommend Pamela and Emotion Literacy Advocates for resources into mental wellbeing and teaching opportunities.