Diverging Together: How group art therapy can affirm identity & belonging among trans, queer and non-binary youth

This webinar explores how group art therapy can both embody a social justice ethics and encourage positive developmental goals for youth with non-normative gender identities & sexualities. Through a primarily anti-oppressive and psychosocial lens, the presenter weaves together professional and personal experience, critical analysis and client art/story to demonstrate the unique role group art therapy can provide for trans, queer and nonbinary adolescents.

The presentation highlights a recent LGBTQ+ art therapy group for youth in a high school setting while sharing insights gained and centering the voices and values of the participants. In this context, group art therapy offered a protective and generative space where participants could visually and vocally express themselves while receiving recognition and validation for those aspects of self otherwise contested by the world at large.

Some of the core themes and benefits that emerged from the group affirmed the importance of peer belonging, community identity and ethos, authentic self-expression and bodily autonomy. Further, because art therapy embraces multiple meanings, complexity, ambiguity, transition and self-definition, it proved to be an ideal medium for adolescents diverging from binaries of all kinds.