COLLAGE CARE: THE METHOD™— A BRIEF HISTORY
by Laurie Kanyer, MA
How It Began — Using Collage-Making in a High School Class
In the mid-1980s, while on staff at a community college, my department chair asked if I would be willing to teach a high school course in child psychology. The college had a partnership with the local school district, and they needed an expert to fill in a few sections. It happened to be at the high school from which I had graduated and so I jumped at the opportunity.
My enthusiasm for the opportunity waned a bit when I discovered the class had no textbook or curriculum. Class was to begin in five (5) days. With no time to spare, I formed a syllabus and gathered all of the magazines I could find. My thought was the students could use collage-making to further their learnings on the topics I planned to teach.
The Method was Developed by Accident
I developed a preset daily class format knowing the material we would cover would touch on sensitive topics. I decided to use a predictable format as a foundation to explore potent and tender materials. My suspicion was that those who took this class were curious on a personal level as well as academic about the emotional, psychological world of humans, namely children. I knew that if they experienced a predictable routine in the class it would ease their spirits, allowing them to explore and consider the lessons. This predictable format is the exact model you will experience in the books. Following this preset pattern, I would ask my students at the end of every class period to reflect on the lesson of the day. What did they learn? How did they feel? What did they think about the topic? For their answer, they could choose to either use collage-making or write a brief reflection paper. Most did both, but collage-making was preferred by the majority. The course was an elective and many of the teens had learning hardships, some were in chemical dependency recovery, and others were overachievers who needed less schoolwork. Because of this mix, I wanted to avoid assigning out-of-class homework.
One thing all of these students had in common was they had too much on their plate, with extra-curricular activities, part-time jobs, or difficulties at home. I simply devised a quick and effective method for them to document their learnings in class and to get their thoughts and feelings out as it related to the daily lessons. I wanted to decrease their load. I was just nine (9) years out of high school myself, so I could remember, and empathized.
Surprising Results and Outcomes Emerged — There Were Impressive Transformations
When it came time for tests a majority of the students achieved above a B, and no one failed. All of the students passed the course with the lowest grade of a C. Compliance with the daily reflection activity was one-hundred percent. Everyone took part. Students began to bring magazines to contribute to the source material pile. Attendance at the class, which was held early in the day, was high. Their grades in my class were higher than in other courses they took part in.
The difference? The use of collage-making to mark their learnings, process their ideas, and express their emotions and feelings. Some years later, I learned many of those students would become therapists, medical professionals, educators, and school principals. Some became parents in short order.
Using Collage-Making with Adults
Later, I worked with pregnant and parenting adults who were experiencing poverty and other associated hardships. They were receiving government-backed financial aid grants. They attended my groups three times a week, two hours each session, and took part in individual counseling sessions with me outside of the group setting. I also offered case management, which allowed me to go with them to appointments and teach them skills to access the things they needed. It was an intense program. Much like the high school class, each of the in-group sessions followed a preset format consisting of the exact same components each time we met. These sessions were two hours long, so I was able to expand the model. The format for the first hour consisted of an opening welcome, reviewing of set ground rules, a thought-provoking introductory question, and then a time of them sharing their individual celebrations and concerns. We tapped into the wisdom of the group using Suggestion Circle and other tools to help resolve their concerns.
In the second hour, I made a short presentation, just as I did in the high school classroom. This presentation consisted of an opening quote, a mini-lesson, and a content roundup of the major points of the lesson. They then used collage-making as a way to reflect, contemplate, and document their learnings. We finished each session with a closing quote. I rotated between having the parents make a collage in response to the lesson (as my high school students did) or more often I provided a step-by-step, guided collage-making Exercise-Experience related to the topic (like those featured in the books). There was a time for sharing their collage if they were comfortable. We ended with them expressing any resentment or appreciations they had of our time together. I frequently added other tools aimed to assist them. The Takeaway Action Tools featured at the back of each of the are the exact tools I used.
Collage-making in this setting was instrumental, as many of the women had learning challenges and most of their responses needed to be kept confidential. I had written a book on childhood grief and loss, where I documented the value of modulating and pacing the hormonal energy of the brain connected to grief. I knew collage-making would help them. With collage-making they could communicate their ideas and reduce their energetic-emotional stress.
The Outcome was Remarkable
The state of Washington does an annual review of their goals and intended outcomes for the programs they funded, with the overarching goal of parents securing employment. Their statewide study of like- programs aimed to gauge the effectiveness of these programs. The study showed my program had a 19% success rate, compared to 2% for other programs. While these numbers are shockingly low, as there are many barriers for this demographic to obtain employment, it is clear my program was more effective. Surprising results and outcomes once again emerged. There were impressive transformations.
The difference? Once more, the answer was the use of collage-making to mark their learnings and process their ideas, to express their emotions and feelings. Years later, many of the women have on-going employment, many went on to complete high school, some went on to college. Their interpersonal skills improved, and their self-efficacy was enhanced.
Collage-Making, as Opposed to Making a Fine Art Collage
It is important to mention that I used the process of collage-making in my instructional and therapeutic background. And by collage-making, I mean cutting, pasting, and tearing paper and then gluing it to another piece of paper. We were not making “fine art” collages. My theory was that the act and process of collage-making offered unique benefits that would help, heal, and transform many emotional, cognitive, communication, and behavioral aspects for my clients. I was not having them make fine art collages, which could elicit comparison and critique, or harken back to earlier life experiences of making art. And while likely connected in both form and function, this was not intentional, traditional, art therapy.
Decades of Using Collage-Making with Amazing Results
I spent decades facilitating the use of collage-making as a tool to explore tender and potent topics related to being a human. In every case it provided a way to ease the magnitude of those tender topics, which include emotions, feelings, communication hardships, gaining cooperation with kids and adults and more.
The students and clients did not have to worry about spelling and penmanship. They could express their thoughts, document their learnings, and mark their feelings on a topic with an image, rather than in writing. Often what they made was beautiful, eloquent, and authentic.
Due to the limited time in the classroom or group counseling session, the resulting collages often had an immediate, focused feel and look to them. The elements were chosen with thought and intention. They had a visual tone of force, power, and resolute knowing. The idea was to get their point across directly within the time restraints. Many had a visual feel similar to the art of noted collagist Fred Free.
Using Collage-Making Myself
I later took up collage-making when a sudden emotional jolt occurred in my own life. I had made collage most of my life, in the form of scrapbooks, however making a fully-formed collage in response to a “small t” trauma was a new application for me. I have made thousands of them since that time. I use collage-making now as an intentional self-care tool to help, heal, and transform my life. Eventually, I reached out to the international collage world to collaborate and look for ways to amplify and magnify collage in art history.
Collage Collection Amplifying Fine Art Collage
My husband Doug and I have been art collectors since the late 1970s. For a majority of that time, we collected the works of artists from our local area (see KanyerArtCollection.com). That shifted gears in 2016. Having fallen in love with the medium of collage, we committed to collecting collage exclusively. The goal was to uplift the medium from a fine art perspective and expand it in art history. We began to buy collages internationally. I had many conversations with collagists from all over the world. I began to share what I knew about collage-making as a helping, healing, and transformational tool.
Conversations with Collagists Internationally
Perhaps because they learned I was a counselor and educator, collagists have quite naturally shared with me how and when they came to make collage. Almost to a person, it appeared they came to make collages after or during a time of great life strain. A measurable, challenging “something” had taken place in their life and they spontaneously seemed to take to cutting or tearing magazines, and then gluing paper-to-paper.
Some were established fine artists, who had attended art school. Others were serious hobbyists, who found they had some talent and ended up making collage as a vocation, rather than simply for fun. What they had in common was turning to collage-making during a measurable crisis or serious life event. To confirm this observation, I conducted a study in 2020. I asked participants this question: “Was there a “something”, a person, place, event, circumstance, or situation that caused you to begin to collage?” Of the 80 people who took part in the study, 78 reported that a significant life event, a “something”, ignited them to begin to use collage-making.
Curiosity About How Collage-Making Helps, Heals, Encourages, and Transforms
Eventually the artists in the Collection were very curious about what I knew about how collage-making helps, heals, and transforms lives. One artist in-particular, Andrea Burgay, urged me to write a book. Having written books in the past I was very hesitant, as book-writing is laborious and is complicated by my being dyslexic.
She suggested I start by making a simple list. I did so, and by the end of the day I had 55 ways collage-making helps, heals, and transforms. Later another 70 ways came forth. That list became the GEMS featured in the book Collage Care, Transforming Emotions, Feelings and Life Experiences with Collage (2021). Essentially it documented, with empirical evidence, that my theory that collage-making when used as an intervention helps, heals and transforms. Indeed, many of the people in the study group said, “Collage saved my life.”
A Book was Born
During the COVID-19 pandemic I set out to actually write a book. It was to consist of a collection of Exercise-Experiences that were based on the exact format and model from my classes, individual counseling sessions, and groups. The collagist and painter CP Harrison joined this project and tested all the sample Exercise-Experiences I wrote. Harrison is not only an artist, but a counselor for the American Cancer Society. Many of his fine art collages are featured in the books.
That plan got side-tracked due to the pandemic. I knew collage helps, heals, encourages, and transforms. I decided that I would first publish the evidence, the GEMs, on how collage helps. The Exercise-Experiences would have to wait. My hope was that collagists, in reading the GEMs, would continue to keep using collage-making during this world-wide crisis. I believed if they kept using collage-making they would be well, or better off, than if they did not make collages. And I hoped to convince other people who found themselves in crisis due to COVID to start to use collage-making.
Collage Care: The Method™
Once the evidence (the 125 GEMs) of how collage helps was published, I returned to editing the Exercise-Experiences. In all, I have written over 100 Exercise-Experiences (EEs) that have followed the same method and model I used for decades. The first Collage Care: The Method™ book features the basic 30 EEs. My husband Doug joined in this book project as the editor, and we continued with the design team of JuSt Design. There are now over eighty (80) EEs one can use between all the books.
Collage Care: The Method™ Model
My son Wyatt Kanyer is also a therapist. After he helped to edit Collage Care: Transforming Emotions and Life Experiences with Collage, he pointed out that I had created a model-method using a specific intervention, collage-making. This had not occurred to me, but it was true.
Out of necessity I had accidentally developed a theory which I had tested and practiced. I developed and proved the model. I had studied the impact of the theory and used the model for decades. And in 2021, I published the findings of decades of study in Collage Care, Transforming Emotions, Feelings and Life Experiences with Collage. He encouraged me to document the theory and model, which I did, and I now call it Collage Care: The Method™.
International Research Project
Beginning in spring 2023 an extensive research study of Collage Care: The Method™ group facilitation process was launched. It included professionals and peer group leaders using a draft version of the Collage Care: The Method Facilitators’ Guidebook. The research was being conducted in Oxford, Liverpool, Dorsett and Plymouth, England as well as Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Texas, Washington DC, New York, and Washington. Wyatt Kanyer, MA, LCSW of Tucson, Arizona offered consultation to the project. The objective was to study the viability of offering a facilitator development course of study to be able to offer Collage Care: The Method™ in group settings. The study proved that Collage Care: The Method™ could be offered in a group setting beyond its original application.
The researchers who took part in this project are listed below, in alphabetical order:
Sonia Boué, MSc/CQSW, Diploma in Art Therapy, Multiform Artist, Writer and Consultant for Neurodiversity in the arts, Oxford, England
Ariane Buheiry, Collage Artist, Manziana, Italy
Sara Silvia Ferrucci, Collage Artist, Art Counselor, Rome, Italy
Simone Löhndorf, Ph.D., Collagist, Cognitive Linguist, Lund, Sweden,
Michelle L. Miller, MS, Licensed and Board-Certified Art Therapist, Rochester, New York, USA
Miranda Millward, MA, Collage Artist, Arts Learning and Engagement Specialist, Oxford, England
Michelle Monet, RN, Certified Nurse Coach, Selah, Washington, USA
Jennifer Penick, MA, Artist in Residence, Washington, DC, USA
Juliette Pestel, Collage Artist, Arts Educator, Voorburg, The Netherlands
Catherine Rogers, Arts Educator, Liverpool, UK
Kelly Schaub, Artist, Founder of Collage-Lab, Rockport, Texas, USA
Kathy Why, Emotional Literacy Educator, Dorset, UK
Agnieszka Zajac, MA, Collage Artist, Author, Founder of The Polaroids Collage Club and Plymouth Collage Collective, Plymouth, UK
International Research “Beta Test” Project on a Modular Group Facilitator Self-Study System
In 2024, Kanyer Publishing LLC launched a second research project on the Collage Care: The Method™ model. The aim was to continue to study and determine the most effective system to develop group facilitators. In contrast to the research project of 2023, which used a guidebook system, the project of 2024 tested the use of a modular, self-study system.
Thirty-two (32) professionals in thirteen (13) countries on four (4) continents took part in a self-study development course. An additional group of facilitators took part who were associated with Georgetown Lombardi Arts & Humanities Program at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. Mental Health Clinicians Wyatt Kanyer, LCSW, RYT, TCTSY-F of Tucson, Arizona, Naomi Thornton, LCSW of Missoula, Montana, and Julia Langley, Faculty Director of Georgetown Lombardi Arts and Humanities Program of Washington, D.C. were the consultants to the research project. Each one of the facilitator students took part in twenty-four (24) learning modules and many completed forty-eight (48) of the Exercise-Experiences while taking part.
Collage Care: The Method™ in Action
All the Collage Care: The Method™ books offer the reader a self-guided, Exercise-Experience system using collage-making and other ancient tools. They are presented in separate, educational, learning modules. As one uses the Exercise-Experiences in the books you are using the same format and with the same care others have received for decades. Using the patterned Exercise-Experiences, which incorporate collage-making, you, like those I worked with for decades, can experience healing, help, encouragement, and transformation. Collage Care: The Method™ does so with ease, safety, and confidentiality. Using these Exercise-Experiences offers the reader, a greater perspective and keen insight on the trials of life. Readers will be gaining insight and information, in addition to life skills and deeper wisdom.