“Craftfulness” - crafty healing “Craftfulness” is a term created by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin (2018) that pairs mindfulness alongside craft-making to ‘achieve moments of calm’ and ‘mend yourself by making things’. Davidson and Tahsin in their book explore mindfulness, positive psychology, and creativity research in the act of making something through craft and how that impacts the mental well-being of an individual. ‘Making things makes us happy because pleasure and p

Found objects in art therapy One of the directives we have been exploring at Kids Inspired is asking the kids to bring a memento or object that is important to them to their art therapy sessions. ‘Found objects’ can be any everyday objects that we either find around the house or out in the world. We’ve had so many different items coming through our doors like rocks they found on family holidays, an artwork they’ve made in school or even a scrap piece of fabric from an old toy

Postcard Art Therapy One of our latest art therapy directives has been generating some great results at Kids Inspired, and that’s creating an emotive postcard. These postcards are designed as a private space to communicate some feelings to someone that will never receive it. At the beginning of the activity, we ask participants to reflect on a person or experience that they have felt frustrated, sad or happy about. The child is encouraged to design a postcard, modelling it of

Collaborative Art-Making Lately we’ve started to explore collaborative art-making during our art therapy sessions with some of the kids that struggle to engage with art-making on their own. Collaborative art therapy sessions offer individuals and groups opportunities to learn how to work together, resolve conflicts, work through trauma, develop social and communication skills, and a safe place for expression. (Malchiodi, 2012). It’s not unusual for a child to find a blank

Art Therapy online - how does it work? Often we get enquiries from our parents asking how can you do art therapy through a computer screen? The structure and delivery of the session is not that different from an in-person art therapy session. It just requires a little bit more pre-planning before the session and a dialogue between the parent and therapist. Art Therapy online is also a terrific alternative for our out of the area families who don’t want to travel too far but a

Modelling after my family One of the newer exercises we have brought into our art therapy sessions at Kids Inspired is forming our family dynamic out of clay! The child is encouraged to create models of their immediate family members (and extended if desired!) and paint them in the second session. The clay evokes a calming and soothing feeling, providing just enough tension to get the fingers working, but not too much that the task feels daunting. We encourage the child to co

Visual Body Mapping One of the exercises we use with some of our older kids in art therapy is a visual body map. Similar to a ‘check-in’ image, the body map encourages the child to focus on how they’re feeling in this moment and becoming more self-aware of their body. Start by drawing an outline of a body - doesn’t have to be perfect and all of the limbs can be oddly shaped or you can have a great big head and a tiny body! Doesn’t matter! Then you need to think really careful

{ Art Therapy } Did you know that you can now book in for individual art therapy with our Registered Art Therapist, Alexandra. Arts therapy is an allied health profession, and is delivered by professionally trained arts therapists who work with clients using art, dance or drama within their therapy sessions. The therapist supports participants to work toward their individual goals in creative ways to enhance physical and emotional well-being. NDIS Participants may use their