Healing Through the Arts: Photos from the Field

John is a multi-award winning documentary filmmaker, photojournalist, and an adjunct professor of Journalism at Boston University. He has worked as a director, producer, cinematographer, editor, and photographer for various outlets including PBS, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Global Post, UNICEF, and Refugees International. John has been passionate about producing stories that give a voice to the voiceless. These projects have included homelessness, refugees, HIV/AIDS, mental illness, and teenage mothers and have been featured on PBS and ABC News. Among these, Holding On: A Love Story From the Street (PBS) and Street Doctors (ABC News) received Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards.

UNICEF’s Art-in-a-Box, also called the Adolescent Kit for Expression and Innovation, can provide 50 adolescents, ages 10–17, with an outlet for creative expression to help overcome trauma caused by conflict or emergency. This special tool offers guided activities proven to promote psychological healing through art, cultural traditions, problem solving, experimentation, and innovation. The kit includes art supplies such as colored pencils, markers, paper, and scissors, as well as inspiration cards and emotion cubes. Facilitators specially trained in the Adolescent Kit curriculum support life skills development and community engagement activities.