PUBLICATIONS & USEFUL LINKS

Supporting Youths to Thrive: Art Therapy- Based Intervention Study by Dr Pamela Costes-Onishi, Dr Imelda Caleon, Yoko Choi and Natalie Kang (2025).

The Supporting Youths to Thrive study offers a compelling look into how art therapy can empower adolescents to navigate emotional challenges and build resilience. Developed by researchers from the National Institute of Education and The Red Pencil (Singapore), the Thrive program transforms artmaking into a catalyst for self-discovery, emotional regulation, and connection. Rich qualitative insights reveal how creative expression helped students articulate complex feelings and strengthen peer bonds. The study positions arts-based interventions as a vibrant, human-centered approach to nurturing youth well-being within Singapore’s evolving educational landscape.

Click here for the full PDF!

Art Therapy Singapore – Repository. LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore. Singapore. Lay, R. (2025).

This living repository, compiled by Dr. Ronald PMH Lay of LASALLE College of the Arts, brings together an extensive collection of publications, research, and resources that chart the evolution of art therapy in Singapore and the region. Conceived as both an archive and collaborative platform, it documents the growing body of locally grounded, culturally relevant art therapy scholarship and practice. The repository highlights contributions from practitioners, researchers, and graduates, reflecting Singapore’s unique social and cultural landscape while aligning with global developments in the field.

Click here for the full PDF!

Found Objects in Art Therapy: Materials and Process, Daniel Wong and Ronald P.M.H. Lay, 2021

This book shows how art therapists can use found objects in their work with clients.

Found objects can be a highly affordable, imaginative and creative way of working, and are particularly effective when working with marginalised populations and clients who have experienced trauma. This edited collection contains chapters from a wide variety of contributors from around the world and covers a vast array of topics, including the use of found objects in clinical settings, community and art practice, pedagogy and self-care.

This is the ideal resource for any art therapist wishing to explore the use of this non-traditional medium to enrich their practice.

Nature-Based Expressive Arts Therapy: Integrating the expressive Arts and Ecotherapy, Sally Atkins and Melia Snyder, 2017

Presenting a nature based approach to expressive arts work, this book provides an overview of integrating expressive arts and ecotherapy. It highlights attitudes and practices in expressive arts that are particularly relevant to working with nature, which includes cultivating an aesthetic response to the earth and lessons about art and nature from indigenous cultures. Four suggested structures for a nature based expressive arts activity—including writing, body and ritual centered—are provided in the appendices.

Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams, Lucia Capacchione, 2000

Written by acclaimed art therapist, designer, and pioneer in personal growth through creativity, Lucia Cappacchione reveals a road map to the creative process that can be applied to health, relationships, career, home, and other areas of life. Using a pair of scissors and some glue, you can bring your dreams into physical reality and accomplish your goals. Lavishly illustrated with photos and collages to spark the desginer within, this book will show you how to make the real notion that if you dream it, you can do it.

Visual Journaling: Going Deeper than Words, Barbara Ganim & Susan Fox. 1999

This breakthrough book demonstrates that there is a more effective way to journal other than using words. Using simple drawings, crayon art, even doodles and stick figures can help anyone move beyond thought into deep reaches of feeling and intuitive knowing. Barbara Ganim and Susan Fox have developed their Visual Journaling technique and created this enjoyable tool for personal exploration accessible to everyone. A six-week plan of exercises and interpretive activities teaches readers a lifelong practice that can reduce stress, explore conflicts, and overcome obstacles. Its simple techniques can help everyone gain access to “soul-based" inner wisdom.

HEART THOUGHTS: A TREASURY OF INNER WISDOM, LOUISE L. HAY, 2012

This beautifully illustrated gift edition of Heart Thoughts is a collection of meditations, spiritual treatments, and excerpts from Hay’s lectures. It focuses on aspects of our day-to-day experiences, and is meant to guide and assist you in particular areas where you may be having difficulty.

Handbook of Art Therapy, Cathy A. Malchiodi, 2002

This essential handbook provides an overview of art therapy: how it works and how it can be used. With over 100 drawings discussing applications in individual psychotherapy, couple and family treatment and group work, the handbook demonstrates intervention for clients facing a variety of clinical problems and life challenges. Leading practitioners illuminate major theoretical perspectives, including psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, developmental, and other approaches. The process of art therapy is illustrated in helping clients manage and cope with problems such as trauma, sexual abuse, developmental and learning disabilities, drug and alcohol misuse, serious mental illness, and medical illness.

Creative Interventions with Traumatized Children, Cathy A. Malchiodi, 2014

A trusted, bestselling resource, this volume demonstrates a range of creative approaches for facilitating children’s emotional reparation and recovery from trauma. Experts in play, art, music, movement, and drama therapy, as well as bibliotherapy, describe step-by-step strategies for working with children, families, and groups. Rich with case material and artwork, the book is both practical and user-friendly. Specific types of stressful experiences include parental loss, child abuse, family violence, bullying, and mass trauma. Important developments in neurobiology, self-regulation, and resilience and posttraumatic growth are highlighted in this substantial revision

Art Therapy and Social Action: Treating the World’s Wounds, Frances Kaplan, 2006

Art is a Way of Knowing, Pat B. Allen, 1995 Making art—giving form to the images that arise in our mind’s eye, our dreams, and our everyday lives—is a form of spiritual practice through which knowledge of ourselves can ripen into wisdom. This book offers encouragement for everyone to explore art making in this spirit of self-discovery—plus practical instructions on material, methods, and activities.

ART IS A WAY OF KNOWING, PAT B. ALLEN, 1995

This book offers an exciting exploration of how professionals can incorporate the techniques and approaches of art therapy in their work to address social problems. Examining the expanding role of art practitioner as social activist, leading art therapists and other professionals show how creative methods can be used effectively to resolve conflicts, manage aggression, heal trauma and build communities. The contributors provide examples of innovative programs on a range of topics, including those designed to address gun crime, homelessness, racism and experiences of terrorism, among others.

Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing in Singapore: A landscape brief of promotion, prevention, and literacy programmes for children aged 3-11. 2025

This report from the SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute, supported by the Octava Foundation, surveys 43 programmes across Singapore working to promote, prevent, and build awareness around mental health for children aged 3 to 11. Drawing on interviews, surveys, and a stakeholder workshop, it highlights both the creativity of the sector and the gaps still holding it back, from funding shortfalls to a shortage of trained professionals, closing with practical recommendations for a stronger, more connected system of care.

Anchoring Roots and Spreading Branches: The Growth and Regulation of Art Therapy in Singapore. 2026

This 2026 doctoral dissertation by Christine Phang (Dominican University of California) offers the first comprehensive look at art therapy in Singapore, drawing on surveys and interviews with members of the local art therapy community. It explores how the profession is growing, how practitioners feel about regulation, and what steps could help it mature, using an “ecological systems" lens that frames art therapy as a web of interconnected influences, from individual practitioners to broader policy. The result is a culturally grounded framework for understanding and strengthening the profession, one with relevance well beyond Singapore.

Emerging Perspectives in Art Therapy: Trends, Movements, and Developments, Richard Carolan and Amy Backos, 2018

Emerging Perspectives in Art Therapy aims to document newly emerging trends in the field of art therapy and to offer a vision of the future practices. This exciting new volume contains a diverse selection of chapters written to examine the current transitional phase of the profession where new paradigms of thinking and research methods are emerging due to the continued examination of old assumptions and development of new knowledge. Specific attention is paid to emergent knowledge in the areas of neuropsychological applications, philosophical foundations, research, multicultural and international practices, and art as therapy in allied professions.

101 Mindful Arts-Based Activities to Get Children and Adolescents Talking: Working with Severe Trauma, Abuse and Neglect Using Found and Everyday Objects, Dawn D’Amico, 2016

Many children who have experienced serious trauma are withdrawn and closed off, making it difficult to engage with them in therapy effectively. This book offers a collection of therapeutic activities that helps children who have endured painful abuse to open up, so that they can learn to express their feelings. From useful techniques for bridging memory gaps to using masks for self-expression, the innovative activities use mindfulness, art and play to help children feel relaxed and responsive. Case studies throughout offer a helpful demonstration of how the activities work in practice.

Drawing from the Heart: A Seven-Week Program to Heal Emotional Pain and Loss through Expressive Art, Barbara Ganim, 2004

When the pain caused by difficult or unexpected life-changing experiences goes unexpressed and unreleased, it can unravel the fabric of your life. Where talk therapy fails to remedy the situation, expressive art proves successful. Using an image to express a painful emotion allows us to see it in a way that is inaccessible through words, making us better equipped to transform a negative emotional reaction into a positive life experience. “When you draw an image of what an emotion feels like, you can finally separate what your verbal thoughts are telling you from what your body’s actually experiencing.”

The Secret World of Drawings: A Jungian Approach to Healing Through Art, Gregg M. Furth, 1989

This is title no. 99 in the series Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts. The Secret World of Drawings is a book so helpful and practical that a wide variety of psychotherapists, health care practitioners, educators, and artists continue to replace their much-beloved dog-eared copies every few years. 100 illustrations (74 in color).A rich reference section invites the reader to an in-depth voyage through other readings in art therapy, Jungian psychology, mythology, and symbolism.

Art As Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination, Shaun McNiff, 1992

“Whenever illness is associated with loss of soul," writes Shaun McNiff, “the arts emerge spontaneously as remedies, soul medicine." The medicine of the artist, like that of the shaman, arises from his or her relationship to “familiars"—the themes, methods, and materials that interact with the artist through the creative process. Art As Medicine demonstrates how the imagination heals and renews itself through this natural process. The author describes his pioneering methods of art therapy—including interpretation through performance and storytelling, creative collaboration, and dialoguing with images—and the ways in which they can revitalize both psychotherapy and art itself.

Culture and Heritage Capital: Monetising the Impact of Culture and Heritage on Health and Wellbeing. 2024

Commissioned by the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, this Frontier Economics report puts a price tag on something often felt but rarely quantified: the health and wellbeing benefits of engaging with culture and heritage. Drawing on a review of thousands of studies, it identifies where the evidence is strongest, such as museums, galleries, music, and the arts, and builds economic models translating those benefits into measurable value, including a closer look at visual art therapy for cancer patients. The findings aim to help policymakers and funders better recognise and invest in culture’s role in public health.

Empty tab. Edit page to add content here.

ANZACATA

The Professional Association for Arts Therapy in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore

Visit website

CATA

Canadian Art Therapy Association

Visit website

AATA

American Art Therapy Association

Visit website

BAAT

The British Association of Art Therapists

Visit website

ATI

Art Therapy Italiana

Visit website

AATQ

Association of Art Therapists of Québec

Visit website

BCAT

British Columbia Art Therapy Association

Visit website

ATWB

Art Therapy Without Borders

Visit website

CAT

Chilean Art Therapy Association

Visit website

NIGAT

Northern Ireland Group for Art as Therapy

Visit website

EFAT

European Federation Art Therapy

Visit website

ICET

The Israeli Association of Creative and Expressive Therapies

Visit website

HKAAT

Hong Kong Association of Art Therapists

Visit website

IEATA

International Expressive Arts Therapy Association

Visit website

ATAS

Art Therapists' Association Singapore

Visit website
Art To Heart Art Catalogue