Do I need to be any good at art?

No, and this is the single most common reason people rule it out. Nothing you make is assessed as art, technical skill is irrelevant, and stick figures, scribbles and a page of one colour are all perfectly usable. If anything, being trained in art can get in the way at first, because the habit of making something good competes with the habit of making something true.

Is art therapy regulated in the UK?

The profession is, and this is unusually strong protection compared with most talking therapies. Art therapist, art psychotherapist, dramatherapist and music therapist are titles protected in law and regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council. Only people on the HCPC register may use them, entry requires an HCPC-approved postgraduate qualification, registrants are bound by HCPC standards and can be struck off, and using a protected title without registration is a criminal offence. You can search the HCPC public register free of charge, by name or registration number, in under a minute.

What is the difference between an art therapist and a counsellor who uses art?

It is a real and important distinction. An HCPC-registered art therapist or art psychotherapist has completed a postgraduate training specifically in art psychotherapy and works with the image as the core of the therapy. A counsellor or psychotherapist who uses creative methods may bring drawing, sand tray, cards or metaphor into work that is otherwise verbal; they can be excellent at it, and it is far more widely available, but they hold their own registration with a body such as the BACP, UKCP or NCPS rather than an arts therapy title. Neither is a fake version of the other. What matters is that you know which one you are booking, so if a profile is not explicit, ask, and check the HCPC register if a protected title is being used.

Which creative therapies are covered by the protected titles?

Three disciplines sit under the HCPC's arts therapist profession: art therapy and art psychotherapy, dramatherapy, and music therapy. Their professional bodies are the British Association of Art Therapists, the British Association of Dramatherapists and the British Association for Music Therapy. Dance movement psychotherapy and play therapy are not HCPC-regulated, and instead have voluntary registers run by ADMP UK and by PTUK and BAPT respectively. Voluntary registration still means training, supervision and a complaints route, but it is not the same legal protection, and it is worth knowing which one you are relying on.

Who tends to find this way of working helpful?

People who find words the hardest part, for whatever reason. That includes some trauma, where the memory is fragmentary or pre-verbal; some neurodivergent adults, for whom improvised conversation and sustained eye contact are costly in themselves; children and teenagers, with whom creative work is standard practice in schools and in CAMHS; people who talk fluently and articulately around a subject without ever getting to it; and people in settings where expression is limited, including some dementia and learning disability services, where music therapy in particular has a long history.

Is there evidence that creative therapies work?

The evidence base is smaller and more mixed than CBT's, and it deserves an honest answer rather than an enthusiastic one. The clearest guideline anchor is NICE recommending arts therapies for the negative symptoms of psychosis and schizophrenia, and music therapy appears in UK guidance around dementia care. Against that, a large UK randomised trial of group art therapy for schizophrenia found no benefit over ordinary activity groups, which was a genuine and much-discussed setback for the field. Reviews across trauma, depression and children's mental health tend to report promising results from studies that are small, varied in method and hard to compare. In short: real clinical standing, a long track record in NHS and school settings, and a research base that is thinner than the confidence with which it is sometimes described.

What happens to the things I make?

They normally stay with your therapist between sessions, stored securely and confidentially, and are brought out when you want to revisit them. Confidentiality covers the work exactly as it covers what you say. At the end of therapy you would usually discuss what happens to it, and taking your work home is common. No image should be shown, photographed or used for teaching or publicity without your explicit consent.

Can creative therapy be done online?

Partly, and with honest caveats. Individual art therapy runs online with materials you keep at home, holding work up to the camera or photographing it, and it works well for plenty of people. Music therapy is harder because of audio latency, which makes playing together in real time awkward. Dramatherapy and dance movement work usually want the shared physical space. If online is your only realistic option, say so at the discovery call and ask the therapist directly how they adapt, rather than assuming it transfers cleanly.

Is this available on the NHS?

Sometimes. Arts therapists are employed across NHS mental health services, particularly in psychosis, learning disability, dementia and some eating disorder and complex trauma services, and in schools and hospices. Availability is patchy by area and referral usually comes through a specialist service rather than directly, so waits can be long. Going private is quicker and gives you a choice of practitioner, which matters here because the fit with the therapist does much of the work.

What does it cost privately in the UK?

Broadly in line with other private talking therapies, typically £60-£100 per session, with London and other major cities at the higher end and some practitioners charging more for specialist work with children or for longer sessions. Materials are normally included when you work in the therapist's room; for online work you may be asked to buy some basic supplies, which need not be expensive. Discovery calls on MatchyMatch are always free.

🎨Art and Creative Therapies

Some things will not go into a sentence. That is not a reason to stay stuck with them.

Art and creative therapies in the UK

Art and creative therapies use image, material, movement, sound or role alongside the conversation, for people who find that talking is the hardest part of therapy rather than the easy part. In the UK, art therapist, art psychotherapist, dramatherapist and music therapist are titles protected by law and regulated by the HCPC, and this page explains exactly what that does and does not cover. No artistic skill is needed at any point. Online or in-person, free 15-minute discovery call.

We’ll be in touch

Verified credentials

Free 15-minute discovery call

Therapists who work this way

One therapist on MatchyMatch is trained in art and creative therapies. Every one is registered with a professional body and checked before they appear.

Emma K. Rowlands

BACP registered

£80 / session

See all art and creative therapies therapists

Nobody is judging the drawing. The drawing is just somewhere for the thing to go while you work out what it is.

"Have you sat in a therapy room, or in front of a screen, with something enormous inside you and absolutely no words available for it?"

When the talking part is the obstacle

For a lot of people, the standard format works. You sit down, you describe what happened and how you feel about it, and describing it is itself useful. For a lot of other people, that is precisely the wall. The question comes, and there is either nothing, or there is far too much and no order to it, or there is a tidy, well-rehearsed account that you can hear yourself giving and know is not the truth.

This happens for very different reasons. Some memories, particularly of things that happened very early or very violently, were never stored as narrative in the first place, so asking for the story asks for something that does not exist in that form. Some people are neurodivergent and find sustained eye contact and improvised speech genuinely costly, so most of their energy goes on the performance of the conversation rather than on the content. Some are children or teenagers who simply do not talk about feelings the way adults expect. Some are articulate adults who talk beautifully and endlessly around the thing, and have been doing so for years.

There is also the shame of it. Saying certain things out loud, to a face, makes them real in a way that feels unbearable, so you steer. You give the version that will not upset anyone, including yourself, and you leave the session feeling vaguely fraudulent.

And a common result is deciding that therapy is not for you, when what was actually not for you was one particular way of doing it.

Putting something between you and the feeling, on purpose

Creative therapies work by adding a third thing to the room: an image, a lump of clay, an instrument, a character, a movement. You are not asked to explain first and then make something. You make something, and meaning tends to arrive afterwards, sometimes in the session and sometimes weeks later. That indirectness is the mechanism, not a decoration on top of it. It lets you approach something at a distance you can tolerate, it gives you a place to put a feeling that does not fit in a sentence, and it produces something you and the therapist can look at together rather than across.

Imagine being understood without having to perform the explanation

Sitting with a therapist, making something, and finding that the difficult thing has quietly turned up on the paper without you having to announce it. Being able to point at it rather than narrate it. Noticing what you keep drawing, or which instrument you always reach for, and realising it has been telling you something for weeks. For some people the words come back afterwards, easier than before. For others they never fully do, and the work happens anyway.

Take the stress test

This is not a test for creative therapy, and no questionnaire is. It is simply a quick way to put a number on how much you are currently carrying, which can be easier to hand someone than a description.

Takes 3 minutes

Why art and creative therapies help

They are not a softer version of talking therapy. They are a different route to the same place, and for some people it is the only route that opens.

They do not depend on being able to narrate it

When the difficulty is pre-verbal, fragmented, or simply too frightening to say out loud, being asked for the story can stall therapy completely. Working through an image or a sound sidesteps that requirement. The material carries what you cannot yet put into a sentence, and the sentence often becomes possible later.

The distance is protective

It is easier to say what a figure in a picture might be feeling than to claim the feeling directly, and in dramatherapy easier still to explore it inside a role. Practitioners describe this as working through the metaphor. It lets you go near something without being flooded by it, and you keep control of how close you get and when.

You keep something you can come back to

Unlike a conversation, the work leaves a trace. A folder of images made over several months shows change you had no idea was happening, and a piece made in a bad week can be looked at again from a steadier one. Many people describe this as the most convincing evidence they had that anything was shifting.

How a creative therapy session actually works

The shape varies by discipline and by practitioner, but the following is broadly what to expect, and none of it involves being taught to draw.

We stay in touch through every step

An ordinary assessment first

The first session or two looks much like any other therapy: what brings you, what has happened, what you want to be different, plus any risk and medical background. A registered arts therapist will also explain what the work involves and check that it suits you, because for a small number of people, particularly where things feel very unstable, a more structured and containing approach is the safer starting point.

Choosing the medium, or being given a few

Paint, pencil, collage, clay, sand tray, instruments, voice, movement or dramatic role. Some therapists offer a specific invitation, others put materials out and leave the choice to you. Clay and paint tend to pull out different things from the same person, which is itself useful information.

Making, usually without a plan

A good part of the session is spent working, sometimes in silence, sometimes talking while your hands are busy. You are not producing art and nobody is assessing it as art. The therapist is paying attention to the process: what you avoid, where you press hard, what you cover over, when you stop.

Looking at it together, on your terms

Afterwards the therapist may ask what you notice, or what the thing would say if it could speak. You are never told what your image means. Interpretation handed down from the therapist is bad practice in this field, and the useful version is a shared, tentative curiosity in which you have the final say.

Building a body of work over time

Pieces are usually kept safely by the therapist between sessions and revisited. Themes repeat, shift and sometimes resolve. Individual work often runs from a few months to a year or more; groups are common in NHS and school settings and follow a set number of weeks.

Useful resources

Therapy for trauma

Where the memory was never stored as a story in the first place, and being asked to tell it is the thing that keeps stalling.

Therapy for children and teenagers

Younger clients often show what is wrong long before they can say it, which is why creative work is standard in schools and CAMHS.

Therapy for adult ADHD

For neurodivergent adults who find that most of a session goes on managing the conversation rather than on the problem.

What is Art and creative therapies?

Also known as: Art therapy, Art psychotherapy, Creative therapies, Arts therapies

Art and creative therapies are psychological therapies that use a creative medium, visual art, music, drama, dance or play, as a central part of the therapeutic work rather than as a hobby or a class. In the UK the term covers two genuinely different things: the HCPC-regulated arts therapies professions, where the practitioner holds a postgraduate arts therapy qualification and a legally protected title, and the much more common use of creative methods within counselling or psychotherapy by a therapist whose registration is with a body such as the BACP, UKCP or NCPS.

Key facts:

•Art therapist, art psychotherapist, dramatherapist and music therapist are titles protected by UK law and regulated by the HCPC; using one without registration is a criminal offence
•HCPC registration requires an approved postgraduate qualification, usually a two-year masters, and can be checked free on the HCPC public register
•Dance movement psychotherapy and play therapy are not HCPC-regulated and run voluntary registers instead, through ADMP UK and through PTUK and BAPT
•Creative methods used within counselling by a non-arts-therapist are a legitimate and much more common offering, but are a different thing and carry the counsellor's own registration
•No artistic ability is required, and the work is never judged as art; the evidence base is smaller and more mixed than CBT's, with NICE recommending arts therapies specifically for the negative symptoms of psychosis and schizophrenia

Why choose MatchyMatch for art and creative therapies?

MatchyMatch is a UK platform for art and creative therapies. Every therapist holds professional registration - with a UK body (BACP, UKCP, HCPC, BPS) or a recognised international body - so you have verified credentials before you ever pick up the phone. Your first 15-minute discovery call with any therapist is free, so you can see if it's the right fit before committing.

Free 15-minute discovery call before you commit to art and creative therapies
Verified UK & international credentials (BACP, UKCP, HCPC, BPS, COPSI and others)
Online or in-person sessions, whichever suits you
Therapy in English and other languages - including ones the NHS rarely offers

Frequently asked questions about art and creative therapies

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