Humanitarian crises are no longer exceptional or geographically isolated events. At the end of 2025, approximately 117.8 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced, including refugees, asylum seekers and people displaced within their own countries. Major displacement populations originate from Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela, while internal displacement remains particularly high in countries including Sudan, Colombia, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan (UNHCR, 2026).

For arts therapists, this reality is expanding the meaning of humanitarian practice.
Humanitarian arts therapies may take place in refugee camps, temporary accommodation, schools, community centres, resettlement programmes, hospitals, border regions and online spaces. They may involve people fleeing an immediate conflict, but also individuals and families who have lived with displacement for years or even generations.

The contexts are diverse. Arts therapists have worked in different settings: with Syrian refugees in Jordan, Türkiye, Lebanon, Europe and North America; with people seeking refuge in Greece and northern France; with displaced communities connected to South Sudan; with Ukrainian families resettled in different countries; and with culturally diverse migrant and refugee populations across Europe and elsewhere. Research with migrant populations suggests potential benefits related to traumatic stress, anxiety, hope, social connection and well-being, while also demonstrating the need for considerably stronger and more culturally responsive research (Oepen & Gruber, 2024; Scott & Williams, 2024).

Recent work also illustrates how widely humanitarian practice can differ from the conventional image of therapy occurring privately between therapist and client.

Usiskin and Lloyd (2026), for example, describe The Community Table, developed through Art Refuge, as an open-access, trauma-responsive arts-based approach used with displaced people. Their discussion draws on work in Calais in northern France and online work with people in the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan. Rather than beginning with diagnosis, the model creates a relational space in which people can gather, make, observe, participate or simply remain present.

Similarly, art therapy work within refugee camps in Greece has explored community mural-making and other forms of collective creativity outside the traditional therapy room. Such approaches raise important questions about how therapeutic thinking can remain present when work takes place in unstable, communal and cross-cultural environments (Hollingsbee, 2019).

With Syrian refugee populations, creative approaches have included art therapy, dance/movement therapy and other psychosocial interventions. A recent systematic review of psychological interventions with Syrian refugees identified art and dance/movement therapies among the approaches used, particularly with children and young people, while emphasizing the need for culturally responsive adaptation (Yılmaz & Karakuş, 2026).

Dance/movement therapy has particular relevance where experiences of war and displacement are held not only through narrative memory but through bodily states of fear, vigilance, disconnection and regulation. Work with Syrian refugee children, for example, has examined the feasibility of somatically oriented dance/movement therapy for trauma and stress, particularly where language, access and cultural barriers complicate conventional verbal psychotherapy (Grasser et al., 2019).

This is one reason creative arts therapies can be significant within humanitarian settings. Image, movement, music, drama and embodied expression do not eliminate linguistic or cultural differences, but they can offer additional ways of communicating when experiences are difficult to organize entirely through words.

At the same time, the growing interest in creative approaches should not lead us to make claims stronger than the evidence permits. Reviews of art therapy with refugee children, adolescents and adults consistently describe promising findings alongside a limited empirical evidence base. A 2022 systematic review of art therapy with traumatized refugee children and youth (Annous et al., 2022) concluded that available research remained insufficient to establish strong evidence-based conclusions, while a 2024 review of art therapy with adult refugees found only four qualitative studies meeting its inclusion criteria (Scott & Williams, 2024). A further systematic review of creative arts therapy with refugee adolescents similarly concluded that findings were encouraging but inconclusive because of the small number and methodological limitations of available studies (Ramadan et al., 2024).

This limitation is itself an important trend. Humanitarian arts therapies are becoming not only an area of practice but an emerging field requiring better research, clearer descriptions of interventions, cultural humility and stronger ethical frameworks.

Humanitarian arts therapies also invite a broader understanding of what people experiencing displacement may need. Trauma is important, but refugees and displaced people should not be understood only through trauma.

Displacement may involve disrupted relationships, loss of familiar places and cultural practices, uncertainty about legal status, separation from family, language changes, interrupted education, economic insecurity and a profound disturbance of belonging. Creative arts therapies may therefore engage with identity, continuity, imagination, agency and connection as much as symptom reduction.

Dieterich-Hartwell and Koch (2017) describe creative arts therapies as potentially offering a kind of temporary home for refugees: a safe, relational, and sensory transitional space in which music, movement, imagery, and dramatic expression can support identity, integration, and adaptation while individuals negotiate loss, migration, and acculturation.

This perspective shifts the question from simply: How can we treat the trauma of refugees? toward: How can creative therapeutic spaces support people in rebuilding connection, agency, cultural continuity and a sense of possibility while living through displacement?

That distinction matters. It also reminds arts therapists that humanitarian practice cannot simply export Western clinical models into different cultural settings. Meaning, image, body, family, community, spirituality and understandings of distress are culturally embedded. Scott and Williams (2024), for example, highlight the need for further investigation into the inclusion of culturally meaningful art forms within work with refugees.

At the same time that arts therapists are moving into humanitarian and community settings, another major shift is occurring: the arts themselves are becoming increasingly visible within public health and healthcare systems

The World Health Organization's review by Fancourt and Finn (2019) synthesized evidence from more than 3,000 studies examining relationships between the arts, health and well-being. Many of these research studies are arts therapies related and makes our field proud of providing such rich evidence that arts work in a therapeutic space. 

Arts in Health movement has expanded internationally with great funding and visibility, promoting arts as central to prevention and treatment of illness and mental health issues. WHO now describes artistic and cultural participation as having potential roles in supporting health, communicating difficult experiences, navigating illness and recovery, and contributing to healthcare environments and communities. Recent initiatives demonstrate how quickly this conversation is moving from individual projects toward health policy and systems.

WHO-supported programmes have connected arts and health initiatives in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Healing Arts activities have taken place in settings including Nigeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Ukraine, while WHO/Europe and the European Union have begun work aimed at integrating arts and culture more systematically into health systems and public-health policy.

This increased recognition is enormously significant for arts therapists—but it also makes distinctions more important.

Arts in Health is an intentionally broad field. It may include participatory arts programmes in hospitals, museum initiatives, community arts, artist residencies, music programmes, social prescribing, public art, cultural participation and creative activities designed to promote individual or community well-being.
These activities can have value without being therapy.

Creative/expresive arts therapies, by contrast, are professional therapeutic disciplines. Depending on jurisdiction, they include art therapy/art psychotherapy, music therapy, dance/movement therapy, drama therapy, bibliotherapy and related regulated or professionally recognized practices. They involve specific education, professional competencies, ethical responsibilities, therapeutic assessment and an intentionally developed therapeutic relationship. They involve a relational model and expertise in suggested arts-based interventions, taylored for each client or group.

Music therapy research provides a useful illustration of the distinction. De Witte and colleagues differentiate music therapy—personally tailored therapeutic intervention designed and delivered by a qualified music therapist—from other music-based interventions that can be delivered in health settings without constituting music therapy (de Witte et al., 2022).

The distinction is not about establishing a hierarchy in which one practice is more valuable than another.

It is about clarity of purpose, training, responsibility and scope.
Arts in Health is also at a point where it needs to continue building its own evidence base. Claims that “art heals” are often supported by studies drawn from the creative arts therapies, even though these interventions involve more than exposure to or participation in art alone. Arts therapies bring together artistic processes with specialized clinical knowledge, ethical training, and an intentional therapeutic relationship. For this reason, evidence from art therapy, music therapy, dance/movement therapy, or drama therapy should not automatically be generalized to all Arts in Health practices.

An artist facilitating a hospital art programme may create an extraordinary experience for patients without practising art therapy. A community choir can strengthen social connection without being music therapy. Museum participation can support well-being without becoming psychotherapy.
However, in places of trauma, artists may not be equipped to deal with difficult stories and hold a trauma-informed space, while arts therapists are. 

An arts therapist may collaborate with artists and/or train them but both fields  need to ethically and respectfully acknowledge the distinctions and the different ways art and therapeutic relationship/space is called to help to build communities and avoid harm.

Perhaps the most productive emerging conversation is therefore not Arts in Health versus arts therapies, but how these fields can work alongside one another without erasing their differences and respectfully recognizing the scientific evidence around each of them.

Humanitarian settings illustrate why this matters particularly well.
A displaced community may need many levels of creative engagement simultaneously: safe opportunities to make art, community gathering spaces, cultural activities, psychosocial programmes, school-based interventions, specialized mental-health services and professional arts therapies.

Not everyone needs therapy.

Not every creative intervention should become therapy.

And people who do need specialized therapeutic care should have access to appropriately trained professionals that are acknowledged and recognized.

This suggests an ecosystem rather than a single model.

Arts therapists can contribute knowledge about therapeutic process, trauma responsiveness, embodiment, symbolism, relational dynamics and clinical ethics. Artists contribute artistic expertise and cultural practices. The strongest future models may emerge where these forms of knowledge meet without one replacing another.

Arts therapies are increasingly moving beyond the image of an isolated clinical room and entering hospitals, communities, schools, refugee settings, public-health programmes and interdisciplinary networks.

This does not diminish the therapeutic identity of the professions. It may instead require arts therapists to articulate it more clearly.

What distinguishes a therapeutic relationship?
What belongs to community practice?
When does an arts-based programme become therapy?
Who is qualified to provide it?
How can arts therapists work ethically across cultures?
And how can we collaborate with artists, health professionals, and community workers by providing the training and support they need to hold creative spaces safely in displacement settings—without unintentionally harming already vulnerable communities or exposing facilitators to vicarious trauma? This question becomes particularly important within systems that may not yet fully recognize or integrate the expertise of arts therapists, while at the same time asking artists and community practitioners to take on emotionally demanding roles that often require additional training in trauma-informed practice, ethics, boundaries, cultural responsiveness, and facilitator self-care.

These questions are likely to become increasingly important as Arts in Health continues to grow.

The future of arts therapies field may depend partly on our capacity to hold both possibilities: protecting the particular knowledge and professional identity of the arts therapies while becoming increasingly connected to the wider social, cultural and health systems in which people actually live.

References

Annous, N., Al-Hroub, A., & El Zein, F. (2022). A systematic review of empirical evidence on art therapy with traumatized refugee children and youth. *Frontiers in Psychology, 13*, 811515. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.811515

de Witte, M., Spruit, A., van Hooren, S., Moonen, X., & Stams, G. J. (2022). Music therapy for stress reduction: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Health Psychology Review, 16(1), 134–159. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2020.1846580

Dieterich-Hartwell, R., & Koch, S. C. (2017). Creative arts therapies as temporary home for refugees: Insights from literature and practice. Behavioral Sciences, 7(4), 69. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs7040069

Fancourt, D., & Finn, S. (2019). What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. WHO Regional Office for Europe.

Grasser, L. R., Al-Saghir, H., Wanna, C., Spinei, J., & Javanbakht, A. (2019). Moving through the trauma: Dance/movement therapy as a somatic-based intervention for addressing trauma and stress among Syrian refugee children. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 58(11), 1124–1126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2019.07.007

Hollingsbee, E. (2019). ‘Tomorrow we make it better’: An art therapist’s reflection on a community mural in a refugee camp in Greece. International Journal of Art Therapy, 24(4), 158–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/17454832.2019.1666155

Oepen, R., & Gruber, H. (2024). Art-based interventions and art therapy to promote health of migrant populations: A systematic literature review of current research. Arts & Health, 16(3), 266–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533015.2023.2252003

Ramadan, M., Hadfield, K., Ryan, M., Cai, P., Bosqui, T., & Nolan, A. (2024). The use of creative art therapy to address the mental health of refugee adolescents: A systematic review. Arts & Health, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533015.2024.2395896

Scott, K., & Williams, E. N. (2024). Art therapy with adult refugees: A systematic review of qualitative research. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 88, 102126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2024.102126

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2026). Global Trends 2025. UNHCR.

Usiskin, M., & Lloyd, B. (2026). It's like my grandmother's house: Meaning-making at The Community Table. International Review of Psychiatry, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540261.2026.2698655

World Health Organization. (2026). Arts and health. World Health Organization.

Yılmaz, T., & Karakuş, C. (2026). Psychotherapeutic interventions used in psychological treatment studies with Syrian refugees: A systematic review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 27(1), 177–189. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380241306029