What Is Therapeutic?: An Arts-Based Inquiry in Early Childhood

The He(art) Cards Project emerged from an arts-based research inquiry undertaken as part of my final-year Master’s practicum at The MIECAT Institute. The guiding question for this work was simple, but expansive: What is therapeutic?

Over the course of one year, I facilitated an art therapy program within an early childhood setting, where twenty children aged three to five participated in individual and small-group sessions. The inquiry unfolded within the everyday ecology of the kindergarten — shaped by relationships, routines, materials, space, movement, and the wider contexts of children’s lives.

Rather than approaching the work with predefined definitions of what therapy should look like, sessions were held as relational spaces in which the question what is therapeutic? could be explored through lived experience. The focus was not on outcomes, interventions, or techniques, but on attending closely to what supported presence, connection, and meaning as they emerged.

Art materials such as paint, clay, drawing tools, and loose parts were offered as companions within this inquiry. They functioned as a shared language through which children could explore, express, and relate — often moving fluidly between inner experience, interpersonal connection, and the material world. Meaning was not interpreted or directed, but allowed to gather through repetition, proximity, and time.

From this work, a series of thirteen postcards was created. These postcards emerged from children’s images and words, alongside reflections from the intersubjective space between child and companion. Each postcard attends to a theme commonly encountered in early childhood mental health contexts — such as safety, separation, anger, care, fear, and belonging — without diagnosing, explaining, or resolving it.

Instead, the postcards hold the inquiry itself. They do not offer answers to the question what is therapeutic? but remain in relationship with it, inviting reflection rather than conclusion.

What emerged through the inquiry was as varied as the children themselves. At times, what felt therapeutic involved having space to share something happening at home, or to have an experience witnessed without interruption. At other times, it was much quieter — a small moment of care, such as gently placing a feather in someone’s hair, sitting together in silence, or returning to the same material again and again.

Across the project, connection was the most consistent thread. Art-making moved in and out of the relational field, not as an intervention to fix, regulate, or direct, but as a way of attending to what supported presence, attunement, and shared meaning within the space.

The Heart Cards Project continues to inform how I understand therapy, research, and creative practice. It reflects an ongoing interest in arts-based inquiry that remains close to lived experience, honours relational and ecological contexts, and allows questions to stay open rather than rushing toward resolution.