About Creative Arts Therapy

“Creative Arts Therapy - for when words are too much, not enough, not possible or misunderstood.”

Creative Arts Therapy (or sometimes called Expressive Arts Therapy or Arts Psychotherapy) is a therapeutic approach that combines psychology with creative and expressive modalities to engage the whole body, the mind and the spirit through non-verbal, imaginative, symbolic and metaphoric exploration to gain insight, make meaning, gather new resources and find pathways to capacity and healing. Where classic talk therapy takes a top-down, cognitive processing approach, the Creative Arts allows for a bottom-up, inside-out and outside-in somatic and sensorimotor processing approach.

It is about the process rather than the outcome or product.

Creative Arts Therapy often takes an integrative, multimodal approach – skillfully combining:

✨Sensory Play - engaging all the senses through play and experimentation with materials, tools and toys

✨Visual Arts - painting, mark-making, drawing and sketching, bilateral drawing, origami and other paper-folding arts, collage – abstract, traditional and mixed media, construction and upcycling, clay and dough, analogue and digital arts such as drawing and graphic design, photography, videography and animation, and fibre and textile arts – sewing, knitting and weaving, art journalling

✨Language + Narrative Arts - creative writing and poetry, storytelling, written journaling

✨Dance + Movement Therapy (DMT) - spontaneous and expressive gestures and movement, exploring culturally inspired movements (Middle Eastern Dance, Temple Dances), yoga, tai chi, qi gong - often while listening to music of course!

✨Music + Sound Therapy - listening to or making sound and song together

✨Drama + Psychodrama Therapy - dramatic enactment, spoken word, group performance, mask-making and costuming

✨Eco/Nature-Based Therapy - making art outdoors, sculpture and assemblage using various art materials or nature-based or found objects

✨Play Therapy - sand tray, dough play, doll play, Lego and Duplo play (aka Block Therapy)

✨Transpersonal Arts - mask making, mandala and sacred geometry art with various materials, visionboards or dreamboards, combining dreamwork with other modalities, creating ritual and ceremonial processes, making altars and sacred spaces, spiritual journalling ( i.e Grimoires, Illustrated Faith)

*Not an exhaustive list!

For every kind of challenge with mental health, neurodiversity, disability and adverse life event, there is a creative or expressive therapeutic modality or combination of modalities that can be tailored to a person’s subjective needs, interests and physical abilities.