Expressive arts awaken a child’s imagination, creativity, and healing!
It is extremely difficult to find the words of comfort that you might want to share with the Fleckenstein family regarding their sudden loss of their beautiful and beloved wife and mother, Janie. The Family has created a healing art therapy fund to memorialize the creative nature that Janie exuded in her daily life.
Art stirs emotion and solace. It is a diverse range of human activity, and its outcome involves creative or imaginative talent expression, technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, and often conceptual ideas. Artful and creative souls value beauty and aesthetic qualities in all forms because of their own expressiveness and intuition.
Vision for the Janie Fleckenstein fund: a world where children and teens have access to professional art therapy and education for improved wellbeing.
The Goal of the Janie Fleckenstein fund: to provide training and educational tools for art teachers, artists, and similarly gifted adults the tools to use art-based and experiential exercises in educational support programming, to help children, youth and teens heal from the impact of behavioral health problems (mental health and addiction) in their lives.
Art therapy is a particularly effective modality working with children, teens, and young adults. Art therapy provides the outlet to release emotions and feelings that are often inaccessible through verbal means. Expressive arts positively affect mood, function, cognition, and behavior.
Children of all ages, both special needs and not, may not have the language skills to express themselves, yet they still have a voice that longs to be heard. Expressive arts awaken a child’s imagination and creativity to help them discover who they are, and how they can overcome ACE’s (adverse childhood experiences). Art therapy brings a sense of calm to the body and allows for the interpretation of surroundings and a personal emotional state that creates solace.
This fund would be administered by NACoA, with a dedicated fund and annual education plan for fund utilization.