Art has a special place in society, including the lives of children and youths. Beyond purely aesthetic boundaries, art possesses social and psychological values and capacities. However, to our knowledge, few studies have investigated comprehensively the potentialities of arts in human sciences in Finland. Even fewer studies have examined specifically the use of the arts with children in relation to wellbeing.

This study aims to scrutinize the currently existing literature in Finland in order to identify ways of using the arts methods to work with primary school aged children to support their wellbeing. To that end, we conducted a descriptive systematic review, performing electronic searches via specific keywords of the Finnish databases Leevi, Finna, Oula-Finna, Julkari, Arto, Medic and Melinda. We also looked for publications in reference lists and social media networks. We sorted published academic peer-reviewed articles as well as scientific anthologies and monographies, written in Finnish according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, criteria that was met by fifty-three studies. Of those studies, we chose five studies to the descriptive literature review, which were considered through qualitative thematic analysis.

As the result, we identified social and psychological well-being as two main categories through which we elaborate the topic. In supporting primary school aged children’s social well-being, arts methods were considered especially useful in increasing children’s social participation and experiences of participation. Another important capacity of arts was to support children’s relations with other people, including peer relations and child-adult relations. As for the psychological dimensions of primary school aged children’s well-being, it appeared that arts-based methods can help children to recognize, express and address the diversity of their feelings and emotions, cultivate skills of empathy, as well as develop self-esteem. Furthermore, methodologically, arts-based practices have a capacity to form specific conditions that offer access to new ground and which enable safe and creative interaction, so as to recognize, surface and address different kinds of sensitive issues, which potentially may lead to experiencing safety, empowerment and activation of unforeseen capabilities in children.

This thesis was produced in collaboration with an ongoing research project at the University of Oulu; Gender-based violence in pre-teen relationship cultures: How history, place, affect and arts interventions matter, funded by the Academy of Finland (project number 295 000).