Little Wilds: Dollmaking in Expressive Arts Therapy

Date: Friday October 30, 2026
Time: 8:00am–12:00pm Pacific Time
Location: Online
Available CEs: 4
Facilitator: Sibel Golden, PhD, LMHC, REAT & Jennifer Levine, MFA
Cost: $145 + tax

Registration Deadline: Wednesday October 28, 2026

The creation and use of dolls in Expressive Arts Therapy offers rich healing prospects. The opportunity to create a doll form offers a mindful process that can help to externalize feelings and experiences. Therapeutic applications including processing grief, reviewing childhood experiences, identity construction, attachment issues, and complex trauma, to name a few. Bringing the doll into form or “being” is a creative process that brings together so much of what is available in the expressive arts approach: the visual and tactile; working with metaphor and symbolism; play, storytelling, and enactment.

In this workshop participants will engage in a simple, hands-on process and learn to turn a few basic supplies into soft sculpture doll creations. Through an open and free creative process, you will discover the many characters just waiting to “be born” through your hands and imagination!

This process can easily be taught to children grades 3 and up but is not just for children!
No art-making experience is necessary.

Learning objectives

1. Participants will learn how the Expressive Arts process supports psychological safety and creative freedom.
2. Participants will learn a simple, hands-on process to create dolls with basic materials.
3. Participants will learn how to engage in a meaningful personal narrative process to bring their doll to “life” and tell its story.
4. Participants will learn how the creation of dolls can be of value in a variety of therapeutic contexts.

Required Materials

• Click here for guidance on the Little Wilds Materials List

Northwest Creative & Expressive Arts Institute Cancellation & Refund Policy

Earning Continuing Education Credits

To receive a CE Certificate for completion of this workshop, you must officially register, attend the workshop/program in its entirety and complete an evaluation form after the workshop/program. The evaluation form is emailed from NWCEAI. After completing & submitting the evaluation form, a CE Certificate will be emailed to you within 5-7 business days.

Who is eligible to receive CEs?

• Nationally: Approved NBCC Provider for Mental Health Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, and Licensed Social Workers (you are responsible for confirming that your organization/state will accept NBCC credits.)
• New York Licensed Creative Arts Therapists (LCATs)
• Washington State School Counselor/Teacher (OSPI) Approved by the Washington State Office of Public Instruction as a “Washington State approved clock hour offering workshop.”
• If you are outside of Washington State, we advise that you check with your state licensing board to confirm that they accept NBCC Approved CEs. 

Northwest Creative and Expressive Arts Institute is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists. #CAT-0123.

Northwest Creative & Expressive Arts Institute (NWCEAI) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7104. Programs that do no qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Northwest Creative & Expressive Arts Institute (NWCEAI) is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.