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This is a space where the art therapy experience is revealed as a language of acceptance and transformation. Here, each line, color or shape is an invitation to encounter and to creative expression with freedom. In this column, we celebrate the potential of creation through art as a path to inclusion — a place where all worlds fit and new worlds are built or discovered.

Few practices in the world have the potential for inclusion that art has, and that is why art therapy reveals itself as a privileged sensitive path to embrace differences and promote encounters. By inserting creative processes into the psychotherapeutic context, art therapy offers each individual — regardless of their physical, emotional, social or cognitive condition — a legitimate space for expression and belonging.

As an action therapy, it is focused on visual production, but it also includes the body, music, drama and play. Part of the process is to perform, create and transform art and materials in a free and recognized way in the therapeutic relationship. Thus, many expressive possibilities are facilitated to meet each person’s creative needs, since freedom is the basis of the process.

Art, in its essence, already carries a liberating force. Drawing, painting, modeling, singing or dancing are ancestral forms of communication that can replace or contribute to words. In art therapy, this power is channeled to create safe environments, where emotions can be expressed and worked through without judgment. It is not only for people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, the elderly or those with any difference from healthy norms, but for everyone who feels that their feelings need channels of safety and comfort to be expressed. Art in art therapy gives shape to emotions and helps everyone who can create in this context feel included and recognized in their creative capacities.

Art therapy cannot be just art, just as it is not just therapy. When these two factors come together, the art that promotes the construction of beautiful things and the therapy that leads to the (re)construction of the inner world, provide a journey of unparalleled emotions. One of its great advantages as an inclusion tool is the respect and value placed on uniqueness. There is no right or wrong, just as there is no beautiful or ugly, but in the end, everything is certainly beautiful! Because the satisfaction in creating and the meaning of creation is what gives meaning to the process.

Creative freedom will also allow each participant to find their own ways of communicating and existing in the world, strengthening their self-esteem and autonomy. Whether it is a child with limited language, for example, or an elderly person who has lost the ability to speak due to a stroke or dementia, or even when it is a trauma victim who may be unable to talk about a certain subject. They can find support for their expressiveness in art and an emotional source of trust in the therapeutic relationship.