Art Therapy at Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice

March 11, 2026

At Northern Ireland Children's Hospice, your support enabled art therapy sessions that gave seriously ill children a creative language and a way to find joy, calm, and self-expression when words are not enough.

There are things a child living with a serious illness carries that they just can't put into words.

Fear. Confusion. A longing for things to feel normal.

Art therapy doesn’t ask them to find those words. It offers something different: clay, colour, texture, music, and the freedom to make something entirely their own.

Your support helps deliver a series of art therapy sessions at Northern Ireland Children's Hospice, facilitated by expert art therapist Lauren. Each session welcomes up to eight children: children with complex needs and life-limiting conditions, children with very different experiences of the world.

Across 20 sessions, around 160 young people take part.

They press their hands into clay tiles that they can keep. They fill sensory bottles with things that calm them. They make textured collages and personalised photo frames, keepsakes that belong to them. They sing, gently, with Lauren and her ukulele.

These are not art classes with right answers and finished projects. They are spaces of guided, gentle creativity where children can process what they are experiencing, express feelings that have no other outlet, and find moments of calm and delight in the middle of a very difficult chapter.

A child who can’t walk can still press their hands into clay and create.

A child who finds words difficult feels safe to explore their emotions.

A child who is frightened starts to relax and feel confident.

Creativity isn't a luxury for a seriously ill child. For many, it's one of the few places they feel truly free.

It's a space where nothing is clinical. Where their hands are busy and their minds are quiet. Where they can find imaginative ways to express how they feel.

Your support has helped give a child a lump of clay, a handful of colours, and a space that is entirely theirs. It gave them a tile they pressed their own hands into. A song they sang. A bottle they filled with things that calmed them.

Small things. Lasting things.

The kind of thing you carry with you long after the session is over.