Healing through art therapy - Laurence Vandenborre's The Red Pencil

By some miracle, a French girl survived the deadly 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that struck Thailand. But the child suffered recurring nightmares and lost her appetite for weeks. She cried incessantly and clung to her mum to cope with the trauma. Help came only when the family met art therapist Laurence Vandenborre.

The 53-year-old has been practising art therapy for over 10 years and helps people, especially children and teenagers, to express in drawings what they can’t verbalise. She recalls: “The child was really distressed because she was caught in the tsunami wave. After a few sessions, the mother could see the breakthrough we made with the child.”

Through drawing, the girl was able to communicate her fears about the waves that almost drowned her. Fear turned to relief and, after a few sessions, she was able to eat and sleep, and return to her normal daily routine. Subsequent successes moved Vandenborre, a Belgian who moved to Singapore 18 years ago, to eventually set up The Red Pencil in 2010. The Singapore-based non-profit is said to be the world’s first and only organisation that uses art as a form of therapy. With the help of 150 art therapists, Vandenborre works with 60 welfare organisations in Singapore to reach out to family centres, schools, homes and shelters.

The Red Pencil also has a full-time service at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital that helps children from low-income families.

The charity, which has established a second office in Geneva, has also sent missions to disaster and conflict zones in 19 countries including Nepal, the Philippines and Lebanon to help refugees affected by the Syrian war. Vandenborre says: “Children from those zones have lost basically everything. (But) they can’t express (their feelings) in words. So we let them draw, which is a natural way for children to express themselves.

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A team of 11 art therapists and volunteers from The Red Pencil completed a two-week trip to a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon last month, where they conducted art therapy workshops for over 200 refugees, mostly children and teenagers.

“They eventually start telling the story of what happened to them and how they felt about it, and therapists can help them move from where they are to a better future.”

To ensure there is continuity when art therapists leave after completing their missions, The Red Pencil educates caregivers and parents on the healing power of art in drawing and painting. It now offers scholarships for Singapore and overseas students at Lasalle College of the Arts which, Vandenborre says, will help seed art therapy services in other countries, especially in conflict zones.

“What we want to do is to go into these places and pick very good candidates, whom we can train at Lasalle, and then send home so they are self-reliant. It is easier for a child to relate to an art therapist who is from his own culture.”