Colors and Connections

Xochitl Casillas’ students were moping again. As the dean of Chicano Latino student affairs at the Claremont Colleges, she had come to expect this phenomenon: When February rolled around, and Valentine’s Day became imminent, those without partners seemed to feel their singledom more keenly than ever. She called them, affectionately, the “lonely hearts club.” She also wanted to help.

Starting last year, Casillas organized an event on Valentine’s Day-eve for students who didn’t want to be alone to come together. The main activity was an art workshop, called Campus Colors and Connection, which asks students to consider the feelings different colors provoke and then create abstract drawings to represent those feelings or related experiences. By sharing their work and thinking with each other, they could learn more about their peers, as well as themselves.

“This is the time where a lot of people who want partnership may not have it,” Casillas remembered telling the group. “But today, this is an opportunity to connect.”

The workshop Casillas led her students through was developed by The Foundation for Art and Healing, a nonprofit that promotes the arts as an intervention for loneliness. Jeremy Nobel, M.D., Ph.D., a physician and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, started the foundation to explore the impact of the arts on health generally but pivoted towards developing arts-based resources for loneliness about a decade ago. At that point, loneliness was emerging as a predominant mental health concern, and research had begun to suggest what Nobel already suspected: The arts could help.

Today, with loneliness widely considered a national crisis and young adults particularly affected, Nobel continues to believe in art as an antidote. Lately, he and his team have made a special push to bring their work to colleges and universities. Educators, like Casillas, all too familiar with their students’ struggles, have become eager partners. Even those who might question handing crayons to twenty-somethings are considering: Can they afford not to try?

“I think loneliness is where depression was 20 years ago,” Nobel said, “where people didn’t even want to say it out loud.” In other words, Americans may have come around to the idea that depression is a medical condition, rather than a personal defect, but they don’t necessarily treat loneliness with the same open mind. Nobel, whose background is in internal medicine, likes to say loneliness is just a biological signal that a person needs to connect, like feeling thirsty is a signal to drink water. He urges others to adopt this same understanding, or risk the consequences. 

Evidence shows that, physically, loneliness can make people vulnerable to inflammation, higher blood pressure, and a weaker immune system. Mentally, they may act less rationally and more impulsively; they may begin to see the world as threatening. And the lonelier they stay, the more threatening the world seems and the more difficult it becomes to develop connections in the future. Nobel calls this “spiraling.” 

Young people report to be the loneliest of any age group, despite seeming so well-connected online. Even considering the end of the pandemic and return to in-person learning, Gen Z continues to indicate widespread loneliness; in 2024, up to eight in 10 were saying they had been lonely in the last year. As for why, a slew of familiar explanations abounds, like the impact of social media, drawing youth away from “real” human interaction. 

Art and Healing

For Nobel, the connection between loneliness and the arts wasn’t immediately apparent. At first, his interest in the health impacts of creative expression was focused on how it might help treat acute trauma. He had personally sensed the benefits after using poetry to make sense of his feelings about the Sept. 11 attacks. A psychologist overseeing a similar brand of work in a more formal setting confirmed patients were finding relief, specifically across race and class backgrounds. 

“The arts seemed to be helpful across all these wide horizons,” Nobel said, “which meant something was going on that really rewired your brain in some important ways.” 

In 2003, Nobel launched The Foundation for Art and Healing, eager to explore the effects himself. He kept the focus on trauma-affected groups — first those with military backgrounds, then those dealing with sexual, domestic, meteorologic, and other forms of trauma. As the scope expanded, Nobel heard a common refrain: The programs “made them less lonely and more connected.” 

Science was catching up, too. Brain imaging now shows how areas associated with social connection light up while subjects engage with art. Other findings suggest it can reduce hormones associated with stress and increase “feel-good” ones, like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. 

As evidence mounted, the foundation turned its attention fully to art’s possible sway over loneliness. In its current form, the organization aims to raise awareness and reduce stigma around loneliness, as well as disseminate research-based programs that help people connect. Offerings include original films, online exercises, and in-person workshops, all within the organization's signature initiative, Project UnLonely.

Core to all this work, and meant to maximize its impact, is the foundation’s public health approach. The Foundation for Art and Healing team partners with other businesses and organizations to implement its services, rather than delivering them directly. It also prioritizes simple and low-cost interventions that don’t require prior medical or professional training to implement. “The key is to do things that meet three criteria: effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability,” Nobel said.  

While the foundation also targets the general public, the elderly, and workers in high-stress environments, Gen Z has become a particular focus. Community-based organizations like museums and libraries can be good partners for reaching the 18 to 28-year-old demo. But, Nobel said, “by far the most direct way is through colleges and universities.” 

So far, the foundation has reached more than 50 campuses and 6,000 students. The institutions range from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to large public research universities in the south and small community colleges on the west coast. The activities appeal to a range of campus community members, including those in student affairs, residential life, spiritual life, athletics, and even campus museums. 

At the Claremont Colleges, students used the Campus Colors and Connection exercise to explore their common cultural identity. When Casillas asked them to represent, through different colors and shapes, what brings them joy, for example, she said her Latino students depicted cooking with a grandparent in the Dominican Republic, swinging in a hammock in Puerto Rico, and speaking Spanish. She watched them become eager to tell their stories and encourage new friends to do the same. 

“People are like, ‘Oh, it feels like we're back in elementary school. We're just coloring,’” Casillas said. “But I think they didn't realize how vulnerable they were going to get.” After the 45-minute Valentine’s Day session ended, students lingered to continue the conversation.

The simplicity, perhaps child-like nature, of the exercise might push some away. But Nobel said the playfulness is the point. It’s also part of the draw as a less intimidating, or clinical, form of self-care. “We never frame it as therapy,” he said of the workshops. “We often don't even use the word loneliness in our promotion of it.” Instead, the directive is simple: “Create and connect.”

Expanding Connections

The University of New England was an early adopter of Campus Colors and Connection, starting about four years ago. Coming out of the pandemic, Dean of Students Jennifer DeBurro said she and her team decided to take a “10,000-foot view” of the student wellbeing issue: “We were asking ourselves questions about on-ramps: What are some of the additional ways that we could provide opportunities for students to connect with peers in a low-risk, easy way?” That’s when they were introduced to Nobel’s work. 

First a one-off program, Campus Colors and Connection is now part of U.N.E.’s orientation program. “They can just talk — talk about what's making them nervous about going off to school, talk about what's exciting, reflect on a memory,” DeBurro said of incoming students.

When it comes to evaluating the workshop, the primary mechanism is the survey students fill out after participating. Questions prompt them to reflect generally on the experience, and so far, the results are positive. The vast majority have reported they would recommend the workshop to others (96 percent), as well as feeling more in touch with their emotions (84 percent) and more connected to their peers (84 percent). 79 percent of those who indicated feeling lonely beforehand said they felt less lonely afterwards. 

Yet Nobel recognizes the survey work isn’t as robust as it could be. He hopes to expand assessment to consider the potential impact on student success, including academic performance and retention. “Does being more connected increase learning? All the evidence says it should,” he said. 

As the foundation aims to strengthen assessment efforts, Claremont and U.N.E. continue to extend their partnerships with the foundation. Casillas has now led Campus Colors and Connection not only for her Latino students broadly but with a group of student mentors, who learned to run a version of the session themselves. She also brought the workshop to fellow staff. 

U.N.E. recently began offering a tailored version of the Campus Colors and Connection for first-gen students. “We continue to talk about it in as many different corners of the university as we can,” DeBurro said, “so that any opportunity we have to bring it to a new population, we do.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.