

Ibarra, who is currently studying abroad in Granada, Spain, worked mostly with the ITA’s prominent donors by creating an exclusive newsletter detailing community partnership oriented updates. The ITA does not focus so much on the final product, but rather on the process of creating and the catharsis of turning the intangible into something that can be either touched or performed. Art provides the freedom to make mistakes and start over. Overall, therapy through art attempts to harness internal feelings and emotions by expressing them externally and tactilely, whether that be in the form of dragging a paint brush across a canvas or dancing to a specific rhythm.

These four different creative programs give patients a multitude of options, but each works towards the same goal: a holistic approach to therapy through the integration of mind and body. The ITA, located just outside of Chicago in Evanston, IL, practices Creative Arts Therapy, a form of mental health counseling meant to foster both physical and emotional health through art, dance, music and drama. Rebecka Ibarra ’22 put her art and art history and psychology double major into practice this past summer by working remotely as an administrative intern at the Institute for Therapy through the Arts (ITA).
