Where Creativity, Belonging, and Learning Meet

Communitas of Art Therapy

Creativity brings us to life.

If we were to ask, “What does it mean to live?” each of us would probably offer a different answer. For us, living is deeply connected to creativity and togetherness: the capacity to imagine, to make, to encounter one another, and to create meaning through shared experience.

Communitas of Art Therapy emerged from a simple yet generative question:

What might become possible when creativity and togetherness are brought into the same space?

As we followed this question, we realized that it pointed not only toward an organization, but toward a particular spirit of community.

This is how our name was born.

Communitas is a Latin word associated with community, fellowship, and the spirit of togetherness. It also evokes a form of community in which people meet one another as equals, connected through shared experience.

This meaning reflects the foundation of our work.

Communitas of Art Therapy is an international arts-based learning community offering experiential programs, retreats, seminars, and professional training at the intersection of art-making, psychology, creativity, and belonging.

We place art-making and creativity at the heart of personal growth, professional learning, and community life. Art is one of the primary ways through which we inquire, relate, create meaning, and encounter what is not yet known.

Rooted in Lisbon and carrying the experience cultivated in Istanbul into Portugal and the wider international field, Communitas works across cultures, languages, and geographies. Our programs are offered in English and Turkish, bringing together participants, educators, artists, therapists, and guest teachers from different countries.

Like a tree that grows through both its roots and its branches, Communitas honors where it comes from while remaining open to new landscapes, encounters, and forms of knowledge.

Our Vision

We envision a world in which creativity and belonging are recognized as essential dimensions of human and collective well-being.
Our vision is to cultivate an international arts-based community where people can deepen their relationship with creativity, strengthen their inner and relational resources, and encounter art as a way of knowing, connecting, and participating in the world.
As Communitas grows its roots in Lisbon, we hope to contribute meaningfully to Portugal’s evolving multicultural and creative landscape. We aim to do so with humility: by listening to the local context, learning from the people and communities already working within it, and developing reciprocal relationships with artists, educators, therapists, cultural organizations, and community initiatives.
Rather than simply bringing an existing model into a new country, we hope to allow our work to be changed and enriched by Portugal—its cultural memory, artistic life, relationship with the sea and land, multilingual communities, and position as a meeting place between different histories and geographies.
From Lisbon, Istanbul, and the spaces that connect them, we seek to participate in a wider international dialogue about the role of the arts in education, psychological well-being, professional practice, community building, and social transformation.

Our Mission

Our mission is to make thoughtful, ethically grounded, and experiential arts-based learning more accessible across cultures and geographies.
Communitas creates opportunities for artists, psychologists, psychological counselors, educators, facilitators, therapists, healthcare professionals, and people from a variety of other fields to encounter art therapy and arts-based practice through direct experience as well as theoretical learning.
We fulfill this mission through:
professional training programs;
experiential workshops and seminars;
retreats and community gatherings;
online learning opportunities;
translated and original resources;
arts-based tools and publications;
intercultural collaborations;
partnerships with local and international organizations;
dialogue with the wider creative arts therapies field.
Our programs are designed to help participants understand not only what art therapy is, but also how arts-based processes are experienced, facilitated, reflected upon, and integrated.
We value academic depth and theoretical clarity while remaining committed to embodied, experiential, and image-led ways of knowing. We believe that knowledge becomes more meaningful when it can be studied, questioned, experienced, created, and shared.

Communitas of Art Therapy is a member of the International Association for Creative Arts in Education and Therapy (IACAET) and participates in international conversations concerning the arts in education, therapy, healthcare, wellness, and community life.

Upcoming Programs:

In English

Art Therapy Seminars / Fall 2026, on Zoom

Soror Mystica©: Images That Awaken the Imagination in Expressive Therapies
with Abbe Miller, Ph.D. / TBA

El Duende One Canvas Method Training
with Abbe Miller, Ph.D. / May 22nd-23rd, 2027 in Lisbon, Portugal

In Turkish

Communitas Art Therapy Training Program, Registration is open for the class of 2027-2028.

Creating with the Inner Self: An Art-Led Equanimity Workshop
with Seyma Cavusoglu, Ph.D. / TBA

Ways to Engage with Communitas

Communitas Art Therapy Program 2027-2028

The Communitas Art Therapy Program is the central professional learning pathway within our community.

The program began with a desire to make art therapy education, resources, and international literature more accessible to Turkish-speaking professionals and participants. From its earliest form, it was envisioned not simply as a sequence of courses, but as a sustained learning community in which knowledge could develop through personal art practice, theoretical study, relationship, reflection, and shared experience.

Over time, the program has evolved in response to the changing geographical life of the Communitas community.

Today, it unfolds through a hybrid structure that combines online learning with in-person modules in Lisbon. This format allows participants living in different cities and countries to remain connected throughout the two-year process while also recognizing that some forms of learning require physical presence: working side by side, encountering materials together, witnessing one another’s creative processes, and experiencing what emerges within a shared place.

The online components provide continuity, accessibility, and an ongoing rhythm of learning. The Lisbon modules create opportunities for immersion, embodiment, artistic experimentation, and community life.

Across the two-year program, participants develop foundational knowledge of art therapy and related fields, sustain a personal art practice, and deepen their understanding of arts-based, resource-oriented, and relational approaches. They also build skills in witnessing and reflecting on creative processes, gain experience working with imagery, materials, metaphor, and artistic inquiry, and strengthen their awareness of ethics, cultural context, diversity, and professional responsibility. Through ongoing intervision, participants form supportive peer relationships and engage in supervised practice appropriate to the scope of the program.

Faculty members include Abbe Miller, Ph.D.; Şeyma Çavuşoğlu, Ph.D.; Begüm Akçınar, M.A.; Gizem Biçen Doğan, Ph.D. (Ca); Assoc. Prof. Selen Korad Birkiye; Dilara Karşıdağ Altıkardeş, Ph.D. (Ca); Seren Pehlivanoğlu İlkdoğan, Ph.D. (Ca); and Sindy Şulam Irgaz, M.A.

The program is shaped in collaboration with Curative Arts, Laya Danışmanlık, and 3 Oda Danışmanlık.

What is El Duende One Canvas Method?
by Abbe Miller, Ph.D.

Creative Encounters: Workshops & Seminars

Communitas workshops and seminars offer different ways of entering into relationship with art, creativity, and community. Some participants arrive with years of professional experience, while others are encountering art therapy and arts-based practice for the first time. Some come to deepen their personal creative practice; others seek new perspectives, experiential methods, or a more embodied and relational dimension within their professional work. Artistic skill or previous experience is never a requirement. What matters is a willingness to approach the creative process with curiosity, openness, and care.

Each gathering begins with an invitation to create without needing to know the outcome in advance. Through imagery, materials, movement, writing, reflection, and shared witnessing, participants may discover inner resources, encounter new questions, and explore how art can deepen their understanding of themselves, others, and the world. Our workshops are not built around a single answer to what art can do. They create space for listening to images, following the unexpected, and allowing meaning to emerge through the process itself.

Offered both in person and online, our workshops and seminars range from introductory experiences to focused learning opportunities for professionals and practitioners. Each gathering is held within a thoughtfully structured, supportive, and ethically grounded framework appropriate to its purpose. Together, these encounters form part of Communitas as an international community of practice; a living space where learning continues through artistic inquiry, reflection, dialogue, and connection.

Communitas Retreats

Communitas retreats offer a space to pause, create, listen, and reconnect. Held in carefully chosen retreat settings surrounded by nature, they invite participants to step away from the pace of everyday life and enter a slower rhythm shaped by art-making, reflection, shared meals, conversation, silence, and the living world around them. Depending on the theme and the educator, each retreat unfolds over three to six days.

Guided by educators and space holders from the fields of art therapy, expressive therapies, psychology, artistic practice, education, and community work, each retreat brings together professional knowledge, creative inquiry, and embodied experience. The facilitators accompany the process, hold questions, witness what emerges, and create space for both individual discovery and collective learning.

Rooted in care, equity, cultural humility, and respect for each participant’s lived experience, our retreats understand belonging as the possibility of meeting one another with openness. Through art, nature, and community, participants are invited to remember their inner resources, deepen their relationship with creativity, and rediscover how connection, imagination, and care can be renewed.