LMU's Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic partnered with Maple Counseling to bring an arts-based resiliency curriculum to Odyssey Charter School's TK-4th grade students impacted by the Eaton Canyon wildfires.

"The programming created safe, expressive spaces where young people could process their experiences, opening doors to conversations with teachers, caregivers, and peers that might not have occurred otherwise," writes Director of the Child, Adolescent, and Family Program at Maple Counseling Ruth Xilomen Rios.

Led by nine art therapy graduate students, the four-week series invited children to explore resilience, balance, and belonging through creative activities. The collaboration provided more than 150 children access to creative mental health resources and support. For the graduate students, the partnership offered way more than just experience in the field. It provided an opportunity to help children and bring therapeutic practices into a real-world scenario, adapting the clinical interventions into age-appropriate, in-classroom workshops.

"Working in collaboration with Maple Counseling and Odyssey Charter Schools reinforced that art therapy can be beneficial in both clinical and community settings," said Clinical Director of the Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic Jessica Bianchi. "These amazing partnerships expanded access to positive mental health tools while offering graduate students meaningful experience applying their skills beyond traditional therapy spaces. Mentoring them as they adapted art-therapy based interventions to classrooms and community contexts was both hopeful and affirming," Bianchi said.

Mapel Counseling shares Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic's commitment to offering the community accessible, creative mental health care, and training future mental health professionals. They provide programs to people of all ages and have been serving the greater Los Angeles area since 1972.

Dean of LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts, Bryant Keith Alexander noted: "This collaboration bespeaks of the CFA commitment to building bridges between campus and community, increasing the value proposition of LMU-mission in action, while providing applied training for our graduate students within diverse populations."