A+ Art Blog: November 2025

Thursday, November 20, 2025

Exploring Art Therapy and Community Art-Making for Health and Healing

We have featured a whole year of Healing Arts on San Diego Visual Arts Network and North County Arts Network and this 4th of five webinar offered by the California For the Arts is part of the Bridging Creativity & Care Series. Exploring Art Therapy and Community Art-Making for Health and Healing was geared for artistes healthcare providers, educators, or those simply curious about visual arts’ role in health. The bottom line is that art-making supports mental, emotional, and social well-being at all levels of care.

There were two main speakers for this webinar Nadia Paredes spoke in her role as the president of the American Art Therapy Association. She explained the difference from art therapy and art classes not run by a master degree or higher registered or board-certified art therapist. She explained that Fine Art can be different than art that is fine for us. She stressed the importance of play and how trying something without worrying about failing as a way to maybe learn to live differently as you learn something new about yourself.

Art Therapist is the newest profession for Barbie!

Art therapy is not about the therapist interpreting the creation, or even guiding you in improving your technique. It is not about aesthetics but a good therapist asks questions to bring out the significance of an art work to the maker. It is very intentional. Sometimes just looking at an art work on display not making the art can be useful. But mainly, art is a non-verbal communication technique.

Of course, art can be a self-soothing exercise and one for self-expression which are also very important values. Research of the benefits of arts are well documented and the American Art therapy Association is a good resource for that information and much more.

Lots of people have negative experiences with art (Art Scars!), maybe an art teacher who dismissed your work or your own strong feeling of comparison to what you think is “good” art. Some people need to experiment to find out what their medium is.

There are a huge variety of different venues for art to play a healing role in our life besides targeted art therapy spaces. Artist in residence, spiritual spaces, wellness centers, hospitals, community centers, and, of course, schools. Creative hobbies can fall into the category of preventative care. We have written previously about Arts for Healing is now ready for Social Prescribing and we all hope that Art Prescriptions will be a normal care option soon.

There is a need to map the resources available for the vast variety of arts for healing practices that exist. Then co-creating programs could be a big part of our future.

The second speaker Leva Zand is the founder of Artogether to enable refugees and immigrants to be able to use the healing power of the arts. The deep anger and fear created from the policies on immigrants means many are suffering. Refugee support by the government ends in 90 days and it does not cover emotional damage or community connections. With challenges to English on arrival, non-verbal communication is vital . Art is a universal shared language. Artogether concentrates on the process and not the product and values inclusive actions which means not just free gathering, but supplies transportation, food and support, child care. Besides art therapist separate sessions for men, for women and for youth, they support artists residencies, art in a community setting i.e. murals and special Gather In session where everyone from the community is invite in to participate.

Their motto of express, connect, heal is a great summary of their mission.

Polina Marso led us though an art exercise that is typical of one a therapist might use. It was meant to be relaxing and revealing at the same time. Earlier Nadia Paredes asking us to choose colors and line shapes to identify calm, sad, angry, happy feelings.