Art With Impact, a mental health nonprofit organization collaborated with Active Minds, a San Jose State’s student run mental wellness organization, to host Wellness In Words, a film and poetry workshop at the Student Union, on Thursday.
Art With Impact presents student-made films relating to mental health issues on college campuses to spread awareness to students.
The nonprofit hosts monthly contests for student filmmakers showcasing their work, rewarding them with production grants to make films for its archive.
Active Minds has chapters across the country in universities, communities and workplaces that focus on reducing stigma surrounding young adult’s mental health.
The event’s host, Britt Martinez-Hewitt, is a queer artist who led the group in a calming land acknowledgment before defining poetry as “a condensed expression of your thoughts and feelings.”
“Anything that's put with pen to paper with actual intention is going to be considered poetry here today,” Martinez-Hewitt said. “Whatever wants to flow out of you today, if it seems more like a song, if it's rhyme-y, if it's not rhyme-y . . . absolutely allow that to manifest.”
Martinez-Hewitt instructed everyone to close their eyes to visualize the elemental aspects of the Earth and how people can draw appreciation from it.
The event bridged poetry and film, empowering students to create poetic work after they watched short films and freely wrote their own creative deliberations.
“Another way that I'll acknowledge and mention here is that coming together through the lens of art, and fostering the space for community healing is directly rooted in indigenous and ancestral
practices and really to every single culture all around the world,” Martinez-Hewitt said. “That's one really important iteration of how we can honor and remember is just by naming them.”
SJSU psychological services counselor Sarah Strader-Garcia said the films shown throughout the event were related to hope and resilience.
The event showcased the 2019 short film “Parallel,” directed by Naomi B. Smith, a movie about a man and woman flashing through their own separate episodes of heavy depression.
The ending of this roughly four-minute long film has the characters sharing the message of “live as if you’ll die today, it will be better tomorrow.”
Martinez-Hewitt led the group into having one-on-one conversations about what they could gather from the film's messaging before freely writing and thinking over some soulful music.
The participants handed in their poems to be anonymously read in front of the group by Martinez-Hewitt, who took upon poetic cadences in their voice to deliver the students’ work.
The event's organizers requested that anything shared from the students stays confidential for privacy reasons, which included poems.
Wellness In Words concluded with a three-person panel between Strader-Garcia, Chris Mitchell and Evelyn Tran.
Mitchell works with the Eating Disorders Resource Center, a nonprofit aiming to help people in the Bay Area with eating disorders, according to its website.
Tran works with Mental Health America of California, a nonprofit working toward creating more accessible mental health care, according to its website.
Active Minds treasurer Nayeli Albino said her favorite part of the workshop was an exercise where students wrote a love letter to themselves in the past.
“It's really important to remember there’s a little you inside of everyone,” Albino said. “You can take care of him.”
Arianna DeRosa, community outreach coordinator for Active Minds, said the event gave people a place to express their thoughts and feelings surrounding their mental health experiences.
“Not a lot of people have a safe space to open up about those things,” DeRosa said. “I’m just glad we were able to create a safe space like that for everyone to feel supported and appreciated.”
