What is Creative Arts Therapy?

  • Creative Arts Therapy is a therapeutic approach which uses creativity to explore emotions, thoughts, and experiences. Therapists guide an individual or a group through a creative experience which is grounded in evidence based therapeutic practice. Creative Arts Therapy can range from an ‘art for wellness’ approach which focuses on the wellbeing impacts of art making, through to ‘arts psychotherapy’ which utilises creativity as an agent for change within a psychotherapeutic relationship. Creative Arts Therapists work within this spectrum to suit the needs and goals of the tangata whaiora they are working with.

  • Art therapy can help improve emotional regulation and experiences of self-worth, provide space for trauma and deep feeling processing, build skills and share psychoeducation, and much more.

  • We work with a range of art (and non-art materials). In telehealth sessions, we will work with what you have available to you.

    Some options for people with limited art supplies: movement (aka using your body), natural materials from your garden, writing/poetry/narrative, pen and pencil, sound, and found objects.

  • In an online session we would generally check in about what is going on for you, move into some art making during which I might give you prompts or ask questions, and then explore if you have new perspectives or shifts from the start of the session. In some art therapy sessions we just talk - that is also okay! We like to have video so that we can connect face to face, and see the artwork (if that is appropriate for you).

  • Art therapy places a focus on the processes of visual arts. Creative arts therapy takes a broader approach, utilising movement and dance, sound and music, play, drama, narrative and poetry, and everything inbetween.

  • In New Zealand, registered creative arts therapists (AThR) have a Masters qualification with completion of clinical placement hours recognised by the Australian, New Zealand and Asian Creative Arts Therapies Association (ANZACATA). I have a Masters in Creative Arts Therapy (Clinical) from Whitecliffe College.