Art Therapy is a form of psychotherapy which uses art materials in order to help people express themselves. It involves a therapeutic relationship between the art therapist and the participant and can be used to address a wide range of mental health and emotional challenges. It uses creativity as a tool for growth and healing.

In Art Therapy, you spend time with the art therapist, individually or in a group, making art that expresses something about you or your experience. Sometimes that will mean making an artwork, a series of artworks, or even just an experiment with the materials!

Creating a pretty masterpiece is NOT the point of Art Therapy! It is about giving you the space to express and process different aspects of your life. During or after your artmaking, the art therapist might assist you in reflecting on your work. You may have goals or themes that you are working on with the art therapist which might be relevant to your artmaking. Sometimes these reflections lead to strategies or goals for the future, and sometimes they may reveal something to you which you weren’t aware of before.

The Art Therapy room is a safe place where everything is discussed with confidentiality and non-judgement, just like any other therapy space. What you make in Art Therapy belongs to you and you can choose to keep it, dispose of it, or leave it to be cared for by the art therapist.

Art Therapy has a wide range of mental, social, and even physical benefits. These include: 

• Providing a safe environment for self-expression and exploration 

• Facilitating emotional awareness and expression 

• Reducing stress 

• Developing social skills and awareness 

• Strengthening identity 

• Reducing stress 

• Boasting self-esteem 

• Activating the senses 

• Processing information or experiences 

• Complementing other forms of treatment for mental health conditions 

• Fostering relationships (in group therapy). 

During Art Therapy sessions, artmaking can take many forms! It may be what we ‘traditionally’ think of as ‘art’ - drawing, painting, sculpting - or it may be something a bit different, like cutting up pictures to create your own, using materials from nature, or constructing something out of Lego or cardboard. 

The key aspect of Art Therapy is that the artmaking explores some part of who you are or what you experience - the materials you use to do that are just a tool! The art therapist will be able to guide you to use materials that best suit your needs if you don’t know what to do, as different materials are helpful to express different things for different people.

A session will start with a check in with the art therapist, you may want to share something that you have experienced or felt since the last time you came to therapy, or the art therapist may use a quick check in tool to gauge how you are going.

Then you may spend a large part of the session creating an artwork or a series of artworks, or maybe just experimenting with art materials in a new way. The art therapist may provide you with a prompt for your artmaking that has to do with any goals you are working towards, or maybe you have something in mind that you want to explore.

During or after the artmaking, the art therapist will assist with reflecting on the process of your artmaking. They may notice aspects of your work that are interesting or unique and these things can be used to prompt reflection and discussion around certain concerns, events, or goals.

At the end of the session, you may want to take your work home or leave it to be cared for by the art therapist. This work can be returned to at any time.

An Art Therapy group might start with a group check in. Sometimes an object or prompt may be used to make people feel more comfortable and to allow group members to learn about each other in a non-threatening way.

The art therapist may then introduce a theme or prompt for the artmaking or will simply encourage the group members to create some art from the materials available. The group members may then spend time creating in a way that responds to the art therapist’s invitation.

At the end of the artmaking time, the group may come back together to share and reflect. Members of the group who feel comfortable to share may talk about their work, what it means to them, and the process of making it. Other group members may respond to this and feel like sharing their own process and thoughts. 

Group Art Therapy may be a one-off session or it may be a series of sessions. In the case of an ongoing group, members may form a group bond and support each other with a growing knowledge of each others’ lives and experiences.