Feelings in Color - Part 1

Emotions are more than mere reactions. They are valuable guides. They show us what matters to us, reveal our needs, and help us understand ourselves better.

In this workshop, we will explore our emotions through creative activities such as free painting, collage, and short writing prompts. The goal is not to create something “beautiful,” but to give space to what is within us.

We learn to recognize emotions in our bodies and take them seriously, because this is the key to clarity and self-compassion. Theoretical insights are combined with creative exercises, self-exploration, and group discussion.

DATES

Workshop 1: Emotions in Color – Emotional Regulation through Free Painting
Tuesday, 3 November 2026 | 3:00–7:00 p.m.

Workshop 2: Leaving a Mark – Exploring Self-Efficacy Creatively through Collage
Tuesday, 17 November 2026 | 3:00–7:00 p.m.

The workshop will take place in the ceremonial rooms of the Residenzschloss ("ehemalige Repräsentationsräume"), opposite the Schlosskirche and next to the AStA’s Schlosskeller.

Advance registration is required via the Workshop: “Feelings in Color” | Skills Portal TU Darmstadt

Who is the workshop for?

For anyone who would like to reconnect with themselves, express themselves creatively, and strengthen their emotional self-regulation. No previous experience is required.

Fees for both sessions, including materials:

€15 for students
€30 for TU Darmstadt employees
€45 for external participants

Further information about the workshop facilitators

Julia Reichelt, M.A. heads the TU Kunstforum and curates its exhibitions. She is also a trained painting therapist (IHKD), systemic coach (ICI), and Mental Health First Aid practitioner.

Since May 2024, she has been developing a wide range of creative workshops for members of all status groups at TU Darmstadt, which are also open to interested participants from outside the university. The workshops focus particularly on strengthening personal resources and resilience.

She also initiated and established the TU Kunstforum’s Wanderatelier, or Mobile Painting Studio, where participants can discover or rediscover the experience of free painting.

Lea Sahm works at TU Darmstadt’s University Teaching Center in the field of mental strength and emotional balance. She holds an M.Sc. in Psychology and is also a trained health and pediatric nurse. She has worked in both child and adolescent psychiatry and adult psychiatry.

Her areas of expertise include resilience, positive psychology, and stress management. As part of her work, Lea Sahm develops workshops and tools designed to help students build mental strength and support their long-term mental health.

About the TU Kunstforum’s Wanderatelier

Through its open painting space, the TU Kunstforum contributes to promoting health and strengthening resilience among members of all status groups at TU Darmstadt. The open painting studio is also a place for international encounters, exchange, and community.

The free painting and guided painting sessions offered by the TU Kunstforum are inspired, among other sources, by Arno Stern (*1924 in Kassel, †2024 in Paris) and his concept of the Malort, a dedicated painting space that can now be found in many parts of the world.

In these spaces, adults and children paint independently, without pressure and without judgement.

“The desire to paint rests within every human being,” Arno Stern writes in his book The Painting Game and the Natural Trace.

Arno Stern discovered the beneficial effects of free painting almost by chance in 1946, while working at a home for children orphaned by the war in a suburb of Paris, where his task was to keep the children occupied. He encouraged them to paint, set up a studio, and in doing so created the Malort: a protected space in which children, and later adults, could paint playfully, without pressure and without judgement.

This marked the beginning of the Malort. During the 1950s, Stern expanded his work and established a studio in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés district in the 6th arrondissement, initially for children and later also for adults.

UNESCO became aware of Stern’s work and appointed him as an expert delegate to the first International Congress on Art Education in Bristol. On 9 September 2019, Arno Stern was honoured by UNESCO and the Sorbonne in Paris for his life’s work, thereby bringing his work into the academic sphere.

Painting under Stern’s approach does not pursue a therapeutic objective and should therefore not be understood as art therapy. Instead, the emphasis lies on the activity of painting itself. The spatial setting and the regularly recurring, consistent situation, with its simple rules, create supportive conditions for the painting process and give participants the inner freedom to develop in their own way.

No artistic skills or knowledge of specific techniques are required for guided painting. The emphasis is on experiencing the process of painting rather than on producing a finished or perfect work of art.