questions?

Art Psychotherapy can also be called Art therapy. It is about using art materials to show yourself and other people how you are feeling when you find it hard to do so in words.

It takes place in a room with a variety of art materials and a specially trained, qualified Art Therapist. Your Art Therapist will help you understand your feelings and assist you to help yourself.

You are given time with paint, crayons, pencils, clay, collage, to make things, play and talk. This could happen on your own with the Art Therapist, in a group or with your family. Sessions are for 1 hour, once a week, for the agreed time, and held within a friendly and welcoming therapeutic, safe space.

There are many different reasons for seeing an Art Therapist, as Art Therapy can be useful in helping you feel better about yourself and situations or memories that are worrying or frightening you. Your art therapist is there to support you without ever judging you, and help you make changes you want.

To feel more confident about yourself

To support you if you are being bullied

If you have an eating problem

To explore changes in your life including when important people die or leave you

To explore bad experiences from the past and put them behind you

If you feel so sad or angry that you feel that you need to hurt yourself or don’t want to live

To understand why you do things that you don’t want to do

To have a secure and understanding place to go to when things in life seem very unsafe or changeable

To explore how it feels when you have to look after an unwell parent or sibling and have no time for your own self and feelings

Using the various art materials to facilitate symbolic expression and storytelling, you will be given time to create a variety of different images and your sessions could potentially include activities such as working with clay, painting, making a mask, creating a visual journal, assembling a collage or primarily exploring sensory soothing stimuli such as magnetic sand. All of these can symbolically or metaphorically carry different meanings, in order to explore your experiences, achieve greater self-awareness and work towards change.

No. Children and young people referred for art therapy need not have previous experience or skill in art.

The person who has referred you, also your parents or carers will know you have been offered Art Therapy.

If other professionals work with you, we may all meet to make sure we are working together well to help you and your family.

You can tell people you are doing Art Therapy if you want to. We can help you find ways to say what you want to tell them.

Your Art Therapy sessions are private and confidential, unless you or someone you know is unsafe and have been or are at risk of being hurt. We will talk to you about this when we meet.

When it comes to the artwork, it is your creation and always belongs to you. Some people choose to keep the finished artwork, while others may decide to leave it in the care of the art therapist. Our code of ethics specifies that an art therapist must safeguard a client’s art creations the same way we would protect any other privileged information. Therefore, your art therapist will not show your artwork to anyone without your permission.