Participatory ‘Creative Health’ in Fukushima schools: implications of ‘ACT’ theatre component for children’s responses

Our group has developed a “Creative Health” project as a participatory educational approach after Japan’s 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The project engages elementary school children in three workshops: “ACT” was first, developed by a specialist in participatory theater, to empower children to express what they think about their community. “BODY” and “FOOD” came next, developed, respectively, by an academic pathologist specializing in blood transfusion and a university-based nurse-dietitian. Each workshop provides creative activities (e.g., drama and performance in ACT, storyboard presentation in BODY, and drawing in FOOD) for children to express their opinions. To assess the impact of Creative Health, attendees were asked about their feelings on health, food, and community. We compared responses between two groups: those involved in all three workshops (Group I) and those attending just BODY and FOOD (Group II). Group II showed increases in viewing their own health and the food in their community more positively. Similar increases were observed in Group I regarding views about their own health, the food in their community, and community overall. Text-mining analysis of children’s free written opinions showed that “taking care of my health” and “communication” appeared only in Group I. ACT had positive impacts on facilitating children to communicate with their peers, become responsible for their own health, and have positive perspectives about themselves and their community.