Creative Resilient Youth (CRY), one of Penn4Cs initial awardees, had their Penn4C Digital Art & Healing Phase 1 Final Session and Celebration last week at the Asian Arts Initiative Space. The Digital Healing Project, one of the initial projects awarded by Penn4C, addresses the ongoing mental health challenges of BIPOC young individuals in the Philadelphia region. The Digital Healing project is unique in adopting design justice principles in the end-to-end co-design of mental health support to young people through digital creative arts. The transdisciplinary team along with community partners co-design and co-develop a digital platform that utilizes AI to analyze the emotional conditions of community members (users) and provide personalized art therapy experiences. Ultimately, community members will be able to create digital artwork, participate in guided art exercises, and share their work with others to receive real-time reflections based on their emotional responses.
In the initial phase CRY staff members Avani Alvarez and BIPOC Community Stakeholders discussed what the process of the development of the APP, defined what healing meant to them, and from there developed activities to meet the initial needs of the project. During the initial phase CRY members along with UPenn Faculty leads: SEAS, Sharath Chandra Guntuku; SON, Seul Ki Choi; SP2, Siva Mathiyazhagan and Penn Students Eileen Feng, SeBin Lee, and Manvi Kaul worked together to bring the ideas and goals of the CRY community to the Application. At the meeting Andrea Ngan confirmed with the group their progress to date. CRY stakeholders worked on their avatars. Afterward, there was great discussion among and between the Penn and the CRY members that were able to attend.
Siva Mathiyazhagan, Andrea Ngan, Avani Alvarez, Eileen Feng, Manvi Kaul, Sebin Lee Seul Ki Choi, Sharath Chandra Guntuku “Digital Healing: Co-Designing with Youth for Digital Creative Arts Space for Community Mental Wellbeing”, AHFE International Conference on Human Factors in Design, Engineering, and Computing, Honolulu, HI.
