Powerful Mask-making Project lets our Young People know they are Heard and Seen

The team at Brambles has taken creativity to new heights by empowering the individuals who we support with an impactful self-awareness activity allowing them to freely express their emotions, thoughts, feelings, and moods, and the ways in which they process and deal with them.

In a radiant burst of colour, texture, and emotion, individuals supported by the charity have been taking part in the inward-looking activity of crafting expressive masks with different facial expressions. The process of creating these masks was intrinsic to letting our young people show us how they experience the outside world. The emotions, thoughts, feelings and moods portrayed within each mask was a declaration of: This my inner world that I am sharing with you and I have my own voice. Some participants, who use assistive technology or communicate non-verbally, found this an especially liberating form of expression.

The activity also embraces the ‘Do you see me?’ theme for Learning Disability Week 16th – 22nd June 2025, which is all about making sure the world hears and sees the unique needs, abilities and voices of every individual, no matter if they have the same or different disabilities as one another.

For some, the mask-making project was a chance to represent joy through bright splashes of colour, fun shapes and glitter. For others, more muted tones and subtle pastel colours were used to, and the Hollybank team observed that these colours could have been representing more reserved personalities. Vivid reds could be symbolising excitement and creativity, and soft blues could be evoking calm, but one thing is for certain – each mask was as unique as the individual who made it.

For staff and loved ones, watching the process unfold was moving because each mask became a story and the voice of the individual who they have spent time caring for and getting to know. The final masks are currently being displayed in the foyer of Brambles to remind our young people and their families that the voices of our young people will always be heard and seen.

The personality, creativity, and depth of the people we support is always at the forefront of these activities, allowing our team of support workers to better understand our residents, which leads to residents feeling more and more at ease in their company. For our young people and adults who can sometimes take a little while to come out of their shells, art projects such as this mask-making one are instrumental in helping them to cope with powerful emotions and therefore grow into the person they want to become.