Trauma-Informed Practices & The Arts

Trauma-informed practice is more than a teaching method — it’s a fundamental shift in how we understand the performing arts & education.

In the arts, we’re not only guiding students through scripts, scores, choreography or staging: we’re also holding space for their whole selves — their histories, identities, and emotional landscapes. As an arts practitioner, you are more than a director, coach instructor or leader. You are facilitators of expression, mentors in resilience, and trusted adults walking alongside artists and teams on their journey of discovery.

Creating this kind of environment begins with your own well-being. Trauma-informed practices are rooted in self-awareness, reflection, and care — for others and yourself. At its core, it’s about recognizing that individuals may carry invisible burdens, and that frameworks for trust and communication are essential for risk-taking, creativity, and innovation to flourish.

The Trauma-Informed Arts Institute offers strategies to help you foster those conditions in your rehearsal space, classroom or board room. Together, we’ll explore ways to build emotional safety, support open dialogue, and adapt your practices with intention and compassion.

The Intersection of The Arts & Trauma-Informed Practice

The arts differs from other disciplines because practitioners bodies can be both the medium and the site of knowledge creation (Vickers, 2023). In the context of theatre performance, Actor Melisa Pereyra (2020) describes the vulnerability of actors and the impact of a dramatic scene on the body, describing that:

As actors, our minds may know violence on stage is part of play, but our bodies don’t. The reality of what we do is such that, if a scene requires my scene partner to put shackles on my wrists…there is no way to communicate to my muscles that I am not in danger.

Directors, educators, coaches and arts leaders often engage their teams in activities that explore their lived histories, perspectives, emotions, voices, bodies, imagination, and mindfulness, which can pose risks of retraumatization (Olsen, 2021). Despite the best of intentions, practitioners without training in TIP may inadvertently cause harm to their teams, students or individuals that they’re working on (Chrismon, 2023).

References

Chrismon, J. Carter, A.W. (2023) The absence of trauma-informed practices in the high school production process: A qualitative study, Youth Theatre Journal, https://doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2023.2218719

Olsen, N. (2021). Disrupting adverse childhood events (ACEs): student perceptions of the counter-ACEs of high school drama. Youth Theatre Journal, 35(1–2), 37–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2021.1891162

Pereyra, Melisa. “We Have Suffered Enough: The Cost of Performing Trauma for Women of Color.” HowlRound Theatre Commons. 12 Sept. 2019. Web. 11 Oct. 2020.

Vickers, S. (2023). Origins of Theatre Performance and Voice Training in Canada: Consciously Bringing Trauma-Informed Voice into View. Voice & Speech Review, 17(3), 322–335. https://doi.org/10.1080/23268263.2023.2257987

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2007). The developmental impact of childhood trauma. In L. J. Kirmayer, R. Lemelson, & M. Barad (Eds.), Understanding trauma: Integrating biological, clinical and cultural perspectives (pp. 224–241). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511500008.

At the Trauma Informed Arts Institute we will support you to:

  • Understand the intersection between the arts and trauma

  • Become trauma aware and knowledgeable about the impact and consequences of traumatic experiences for individuals, families, and communities

  • Evaluate and initiate use of appropriate tools

  • Implement strategies, tools and interventions from a collaborative, strengths-based approach

  • Learn the core principles and practices that reflect TIP

  • Anticipate the need for planning strategies in advance of working with a team, individual or organization

  • Decrease the inadvertent re-traumatization that can occur from not implementing these practices into plans, meetings, policies, procedures, and interventions

  • Evaluate and build a trauma-informed organization and workforce.