Artful Explorations in the Community

Here’s what we’ve offered since opening in August 2023…

Our team has supported clients across the life span - preschoolers, elementary, middle, and high school students, parents, siblings, and individual adults have all come through our doors in the past year. We’ve been honored to support each child, teen, family, and individual so far, and we’re glad to continue this work in the year ahead! We’ve also had some wonderful opportunities to connect outside of our office in the public library, a community center, a podcast, an online continuing education course, and many schools throughout Philadelphia.

Last summer, Kristen taught a 2CE Course through Spring Advisory, titled Child Art Therapy in a Private Practice Setting. She covered developmentally appropriate approaches in art therapy clinical care with children, ethical considerations, techniques for building rapport, and interactive artmaking processes. A self-paced video version of the course is available for those who did not attend live.

In the fall, Kristen offered a pop-in bookmaking workshop in collaboration with the Field Teen Center at the Parkway Central branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Teens who attended learned how to sew a pamphlet stitch book, and were offered a variety of materials to personalize their book into a visual journal, sketchbook, and more.

Over the winter, Kristen was a guest on the Beyond Artist’s Block podcast. Click through to find her episode, titled How Art Therapy Can Benefit Everyone.

In the spring, Kristen and Jordyn led an Intro to Art Therapy workshop for young adults at the Ethiopian Community Association of Greater Philadelphia, where they shared about what art therapy is, the path to becoming an art therapist, and provided opportunities for attendees to engage in artmaking and discussion.

Kristen also presented about Art Therapy for elementary school classrooms in the spring as part of Career Week.

If you or someone you know would like to collaborate with us for presentations, workshops, or some other kind of community engagement effort this coming year, please reach out! artfulexplorationstherapy@gmail.com