Early in Spring Quarter, the Health Educators Reaching Out (HEROs), peer educators, and the Collaboratory staff co-hosted an event called Hands on Healing. The event took place in the newly opened Collaboratory space located on the second floor of the Discovery Hall. The goal of the event was to promote healing, community, and conversation around mental health through hands-on crafts and projects. Each station at the event had prompts that encouraged reflection. Some of these stations include painting on a canvas, stylizing a pennant banner, origami, and magnet customization.

When students painted on the canvases they were prompted to paint something that made them feel peaceful, calm, and safe.

Then when students worked on stylizing a pennant banner, they were prompted to draw something on the pennant that represented what community meant to them. After all the pennants were finished, they were linked together to form a banner.

The origami station was a hands-on activity that was used to promote mindfulness. Students were prompted to write something motivational for themselves on a piece of origami paper, then they were tasked with folding it into one of the suggested origami shapes, like hearts and cute animal faces.

Origami hearts and animal faces folded at the event

The wood magnets were created in advance by staff in the Collaboratory using the laser cutter. The prompt that the students were given was to paint something that made a major impact in their lives onto the magnet.

student making a wood circle for a magnet — Student making a wood circle for a magnet

Learn more about the Collaboratory and the peer health educators group, HEROs, that made this event possible.