On May 22nd, Idyllic Art partnered with Youth Voices USA to host a mental health workshop and speech competition with prizes! This event was an incredible success, with over 65 attendees engaging in discussions about mental health and creating art together as a group. Students responded to prompts regarding methods of coping with stress, as well as what they do to help friends that are visibly stressed. In response, Gautami Palthepu responded “when I’m stressed, I like to write things down, similarly to a bullet journal and I like to communicate so that I can talk things out with other people.”
Emily Zhang responded that she “likes to figure out the origin of the stress so that I can do something about it to fix it. If it is something like a test, then I will study extra to reassure myself, but if it is something that I cannot change, then I find something to do that I really like to get my mind off of it.” Brain Li mentioned that “when I’m stressed, I like to play video games. I like building within it, and my favorite game is Minecraft.”
After discussions and art creation time ended, we reviewed our speech competition! Students will be submitting short (1-2 minute) videos describing the piece of art they made during the workshop, and what it means to them. These speeches will be judged in two categories, one for middle school students and the other for high school students, and the top 3 speakers will receive prizes totaling over $500 in cash. Scholarships will be awarded to the top 5 speakers to the Youth Voices speech and debate summer camp as well! Winners will be announced very soon, so stay tuned! Check out these highlights from the workshop:
