Combat Stress at The Lightbox

For the first ever National Museums and Wellbeing Week which took place from 29 February – 6 March 2016, we celebrated art therapy in museums and galleries.

Combat Stress ran a bespoke art therapy admission for a small group of veterans. As part of this, they participated in gallery-led workshops at The Lightbox, Woking.

These were associated with a John Constable exhibition ‘Observing the Weather’. The overall aim of the art therapy groups in the veterans’ two week, inpatient admission was to explore the interplay between inner and outer landscapes. The art therapy groups looked at themes such as ‘Frozen’, which had a resonance with the stuckness of trauma memories.

The group also created 3D landscapes out of wood and other materials, using textures to add a further sensory dimension to the work and offering new perspectives to explore.

The workshops were tailor-made for the group following an initial meeting between Lightbox staff and Jan Lobban, the art therapist. As well as opening creative opportunities for the veterans within a cultural context, visiting the gallery also presented challenges for those who felt socially isolated, hypervigilant and avoidant of public places. Consequently, wider benefits of the project were increasing distress tolerance and overcoming experiential avoidance.

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