Sculpt Off Cruelty Project

This Pro Bono Project founded by Dr Peg LeVine began as a restorative practice for refugees who have been granted residency status — or await their fate after detention. It has expanded to include other war victims, e.g. Peace Keeping forces and veterans.  

An eco-centred, curiosity-enhancing environment (non-institutional or computer driven — zoom) is essential for restoring the human imagination and sensory system harmed by human cruelty.**

Duty of Care and Secure Practice:

As a specialist of torture and trauma aftermath, LeVine and her team (registered art therapists and Morita specialists) choose media that account for each participant’s geo-war history of sensory saturation and torturous experiences (psychological torture is not always accompanied by physical torture).

Readiness is assessed for group and/or individual projects. We do sensory assessments. This is not an occupational or recreational project. Therapists are trained to consider the sculpting methods, tools, levels of messiness across medium (clay, wood, plasticine, stone (soft to hard), metal, and recycled material) for each person’s sensory system health. Ethically, we assess to avoid immersion methods and environs that overwhelm an individual’s sensory system — hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting). For instance, hammering or pounding may be abrasive; or smelling of wood carvings may trigger a torturous experience.  Assessing natural talents, physical capacity, preference for neatness, sensory and imagination-safety is ethical and integral to our clients’ wellbeing.  

Independent Practice Affiliation:

This project has no religious affiliation and operates outside a religious affiliated program and environment. Double binds operate for those seeking refuge in their host culture. For instance, someone from a European colonised region of Africa may claim to hold the same religion as a funded location, such as a church or synagogue. However, being steeped in ancestral ritual practices and holding to geo-cosmological sources of harm and protection — they are wise to navigate in the dominant culture’s scape with little disclosure.  (They rightfully fear they may be considered superstitious). 

Past Project Example:

Five women from a SE Asian country each made a shrine out of clay (slab structure, kiln fired). They collaborated on a prototype from their remote villages, a place they could not return safely. Taking their shrines home, they now honoured their ancestors with fruit and incense each morning. Wishing for photos they no longer had, they made tiny amulets for their visitations [Image: Soft soap stone with tiny Buddha head carved into forehead]. 

Specialisation under this Project:

As a medical anthropologist, clinical psychologist and scholar of mass violence and genocide, Peg brings awareness of the cost of human cruelty on the human imagination. The project environment is vital to participants’ experiences of safety and freedom. The strategic use of silence, too, is essential; verbal therapy fall shorts of engaging the senses. Given that over half the world is steeped in animist perceptions and practices (regardless of language, religion, nationality, gender, etc.), sculpting offers a culturally-responsive medium for expression.

**As a specialist/scholar of psychiatrist Shoma Morita, MD (moritatherapy.net), Dr LeVine has drawn from Morita’s ‘classic’ intended approach and eco-centric environment to “enable restoration of the human imagination and sensory system — harmed by human cruelty.” PL, 2017].