About
The ELM Foundation was launched on February 20th, 2019 in honor of Emma Lauren McCoy.
As a young artist herself, Emma’s intense childhood story inspired the creation of this nonprofit organization. Children are often left without a true voice in adult situations, if not dealt with properly this can lead to deeper psychological issues. The use of arts and arts therapy gives kids a way to explore their feelings and express themselves in more productive ways in which they can relate. This, in turn, can promote personal development, increase coping skills, and enhance cognitive function.
Mending Hearts Through Art
Although we believe that arts and arts therapy is beneficial for all ages, the ELM Foundation will focus primarily on children who are facing the topic of parental loss or family structure adjustment.
By advocating how arts therapy can reach children in a more meaningful way to help facilitate communication and promote healing, we hope to bring awareness that using the arts as therapy can be tremendously successful. However, to date, we feel arts therapy has been greatly underutilized but with our public outreach initiative, we hope to show there are great needs and benefits, especially for children.
ELM Foundation will take our focus group of children and coordinate with private licensed arts therapists to help guide them through the healing process. We will then combine efforts with the ELM Foundation Family of Fellows and Mentors to lead classes and workshops in various study areas to enhance the multidisciplinary approach to arts education.
By providing this continued education, we hope to further the kids’ interest in a lifelong love for creation and self expression, with the ultimate goal of proving the healing power of the arts.
In our life in some way: death, divorce, separation from a parent in any form. From very basic family changes to the extreme, the children’s feelings are often overlooked in the process. Adults can sometimes get caught up in the stresses of life themselves and assume the children will be fine. The children are frequently left to accept the changes without an outlet to express their feelings. What this creates is the base for lifelong issues, from anxiety to extreme abandonment feelings and more. These childhood experiences can create major adjustment problems when they become adults. This can be a vicious cycle passed on from generation to generation if not properly addressed.
