The Power of Arts Therapy | Laurence Vandenborre | TEDxLASALLE

Overview

Laurence Vandenborre shares a personal and professional account of how arts therapy (especially drawing) can help people process grief, trauma, and fear—and how it can be practiced as a simple self-care exercise.

Key wellness & self-care strategies

• Turn intense emotions into images

  • After a life-altering loss (her mother’s death), she describes regaining stability “one day at a time,” eventually learning a “necessary role” in the process.
  • She emphasizes that difficult feelings can be expressed safely through art rather than only through words.

• Use spontaneous drawing for emotional release

  • In her work with tsunami-affected children, one girl responded by drawing huge waves and herself in them.
  • She sometimes tore/ripped the drawing as a symbolic act of letting go, which supported relief and recovery.
  • Over time, the child moved from painful images to more positive ones that restored confidence and resilience.

• Replace “painful images” with “images of hope” (guided imagery/art exercise)

  • She invites the audience to do an in-the-moment practice:
    • Ask your mind for an image/symbol of how you feel right now
    • If it’s not positive: acknowledge it, accept it, gently let it go, and “blow it away”
    • Then ask again for a new image of hope
    • Anchor it with sensory details (color/texture) and connect it to music
    • “Store” the image so it can be revisited later as a coping resource

• Treat all emotions as information/friends

  • She frames emotions as messages about what truly matters—even the difficult ones.
  • The goal isn’t to suppress feelings, but to acknowledge them and transform their expression.

Productivity / resilience theme

• There is “no dead end”
  • Therapy and creativity are presented as ways to open “new space” internally and redesign the future with new strengths, resources, and connections.

Humanitarian application (arts therapy as ongoing support)

She explains how her organization, Red Pencil, uses art therapy and related creative practices to support:

• Children and families in war zones and natural disaster aftermath
• Caregivers (training them in therapeutic art)
• Diverse settings: hospitals, family centers, homes, orphanages, shelters, schools, and prisons

The mission includes research and assessment to ensure credibility and long-term impact.

Presenters / Sources

• Laurence Vandenborre (speaker; founder of Red Pencil; TEDxLASALLE talk)
• Red Pencil (humanitarian art therapy organization mentioned)
• LASALLE College of the Arts (students produced a referenced Red Pencil video)