Coordinator: Lisa Bartoli
Mission Statement: To provide a safe and empowering space where participants with varying levels of physical, emotional, and intellectual disabilities can express themselves, connect with peers, and feel joy through the power and creativity of art.
Description: Art Therapy Express is a nonprofit organization that provides innovative, therapeutic arts programming throughout the state of Delaware. Art Therapy Express is designed for outreach and in 2019 won the Governor’s Award for the Arts for Community Engagement. Art Therapy Express aims to return to serve our pre pandemic audience of over 1,000 children and adults with mild to severe intellectual, physical, emotional, and communication disabilities in schools, hospitals, residential facilities, group homes, day programs, and in their Kaleidoscope Adapted Art Studio located at New Castle County’s Department of Community Services Art Studio.
Art Therapy Express strives to address the emotional well-being of the community through stress reduction, fostering positive behaviors, and implementing emotional support groups for program participants and caregivers. This is often accomplished by promoting individual self-expression and empowerment through the use of adaptive technology with custom-designed tools, art media, and equipment that can accommodate children and adults with a wide range of disabilities. Art offers a new form of self-expression and provides joy to individuals who are nonverbal or who have difficulty communicating. The creative art programs offered by Art Therapy Express also decrease the isolation often experienced by people with disabilities, and inclusive social interactions foster increased understanding, empathy and problem-solving skills among volunteers and interns.
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Art Therapy Express strives to make the transformative benefits of art accessible to our entire community, irrespective of cultural background, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, mental health diagnosis, or disability.
In pursuit of racial equity and inclusivity, Art Therapy Express is deeply committed to fostering diversity and inclusiveness in both our organization and the wider community. We are resolute in our mission and core values of creativity, quality of care, empowerment, inclusiveness, collaboration, and accountability, ensuring that our programs, staff, and board embody these principles.
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With the onset of COVID-19, interns from the University of Delaware and Delaware Technical-Community College worked with Art Therapy Express to facilitate a seamless move to a virtual platform that supports online programming for both individual and group art sessions. This has become a tremendous resource for vulnerable individuals who are at high-risk for contracting COVID-19 and who otherwise would remain socially isolated while at home. It has reduced the isolation of both caregivers and their loved ones with disabilities by maintaining the inclusive social relationships that had been developed in the art studio while also providing caregivers with a way to connect with one another. Art Therapy Express will continue to implement programming on this virtual platform, ensuring that their services are available to all, whether face-to-face or virtually while also providing in-person sessions in the community and our adapted art studio.
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The partnerships between university interns and Art Therapy Express will also have a lasting impact in the years to come. These students, from a variety of fields, are becoming the professionals of tomorrow and their interactions with program participants have altered their perception of the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities and their families. This may be reflected in the design of more accessible equipment, IT platforms and art programs in the years to come. For example, as a result of their interactions with Art Therapy Express participants, sixty mechanical engineering students at Concord High School are creating adapted paintbrushes, paint machines and accessible easels to assist individuals with disabilities to independently engage in their creative art endeavors.
Lisa Bartoli, the Executive Director of Art Therapy Express, leads workshops for public school teachers, organizations, university students and others on how to build bridges between people of all abilities.
In all of these ways, Art Therapy Express addresses its mission of fostering an inclusive community that empowers through creative expression, education, and inspiration.