Welcome from the Executive Director
Welcome to the Lawrence Creative Therapy Center LLC (LCTC). I am the owner and executive director of the center. I have been professional art therapist and counselor for over 20 years and have created the LCTC as gathering space for creativity as a source of healing and wellbeing. As an artist and art therapist I am continually awed by the power of creating to connect us to ourselves, our fellow humans, and our home the earth. I hope these creative connections grow and thrive here at the LCTC. I thank all the creative therapists who have joined the collective of providers to serve the community. I also thank all who have participated in creative events or services at the LCTC and shared the gift of your thoughts, feelings, experiences, wisdom, and creativity.
- Cara Weeks Neuburger, ATR-BC, LCPC
Mission and Values:
The Lawrence Creative Therapy Center LLC values creativity, connection, community, professionalism, inclusivity, and wellbeing. The mission of the LCTC to fulfill two primary objectives. The first is to increase the access to creative therapy services within the community. Second, is to support a collective of creative therapy professionals by providing resources and supports that promote a thriving community of professionals.
Diversity and Inclusion:
At Lawrence Creative Therapy Center LLC, we are inclusive and welcoming to all. Whether you are young or old, nervous about the creative process or a seasoned artist, we welcome you to join in creative therapy as a resource for healing, recovery, or finding your way. We uphold the right for treatment without discrimination as to race, age, religion, sex, national origin, socioeconomic status, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, or veteran status. You will be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect as an individual.
At the LCTC we are committed to a nondiscriminatory approach and provide equal opportunity for participation in our programs. We respect and value diverse life experiences and heritages and work to support environments where all voices are valued and heard. The LCTC strives see diversity, inclusion, and equity as critical to ensure the well-being of our professional members and the people we serve. We will work to acknowledge and dismantle any inequities within our policies, systems, or programs and explore potential underlying, unquestioned assumptions that interfere with inclusiveness.
We would also like to acknowledge our nation’s legacy of chattel slavery and forced eviction and recognize the historical reality of United States as place of discriminatory practices that have harmed countless lives in the past and in the present. We will continue to reflect on and refine our efforts to be culturally responsive creative therapists. Although this is not an easy task and there are no clear answers, we will continue to hold space and commit resources for cultural humility, truth telling, listening, unsettling, creativity, reclamation, and transformation.
Land Acknowledgment:
The land that the Lawrence Creative Therapy Center occupies, and the surrounding landscapes, are the ancestral and present home of Native People, many of whom are displaced, who shaped this land that we now call Kansas. We acknowledge with sadness the history of forced eviction and exploitation that has made much of this land unavailable to its original inhabitants, including, but not limited to, the Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo), Washtáge Moⁿzháⁿ (Kaw/Kansa), Osage, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) and Shawano/Shawnee nations. Today the ‘state of Kansas,’ is home to many First Nations People, including those recognized by the federal government, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska and the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska.
We honor the ancestors who have cared for this land for thousands of years before settlers arrived here. We value the land as co-facilitator in creative arts therapies. We give respect to the Indigenous land-based and healing arts practices that pre-date all Eurocentric theories of creative therapies. We honor the many teachings that we have received from local and visiting Indigenous knowledge keepers.