Under the capitol dome: community art therapy for trans advocacy in Texas

Background Legislative advocacy can be both affirming and exhausting for queer and trans communities, particularly when advocacy occurs in settings marked by hostility, surveillance, and policy threat. Art therapy offers one way to place emotional support within direct action rather than only after it.Context This practice paper describes a Texas, U.S.A. collaboration among art therapists, the Transgender Education Network of Texas, and a queer creative arts therapies coalition during Trans Advocacy Day 2025.Approach The intervention included two in-person community-based components: a preparatory workshop and a trauma-informed open studio at the Texas State Capitol on the day of advocacy. The practice drew on community-based art therapy, queer worldmaking, cultural humility, and cross-sector partnership.Outcomes Participants used artmaking to prepare signs and buttons, regulate emotion, connect with one another, and process difficult encounters with legislative spaces. Informal service user feedback suggested that the workshop and studio helped some participants feel more grounded, energised, and less intimidated by the Capitol. The work also revealed challenges related to access, visibility, schedule changes, and the absence of formal follow-up.Conclusions Embedding art therapy inside an advocacy event created a temporary community care space that linked individual regulation with collective action. The collaboration suggests that art therapy can contribute meaningfully to community-based responses to structural harm.Implications for Research Future co-produced research should examine how art therapy functions within advocacy settings, how participants experience public and private creative care spaces, and what evaluation methods best capture belonging, regulation, and political participation over time.Plain-language summary This paper describes how art therapists worked with a trans-led advocacy organisation in Texas to offer creative support during a day of legislative action. Many transgender and nonbinary people, family members, and allies go to the Texas Capitol to speak with lawmakers and attend rallies. This can be powerful, but it can also be stressful, discouraging, and emotionally draining. The project was designed to bring care into that setting instead of asking people to wait until later.The work had two parts. First, the team held a community artmaking workshop before Advocacy Day. People made signs, buttons, banners, and personal artwork in an affirming studio space. Second, on the day of advocacy, the team created a drop-in open studio inside the Capitol. Participants could colour, make buttons, work on a collective banner, or sit quietly with supportive art therapists and a mental health volunteer.Feedback shared during the events suggested that the space helped some participants feel calmer, more connected, and more ready to keep going. One person said the workshop was ‘just what I needed.’ Another said the studio made the Capitol feel ‘less intimidating.’ The project also had limits. The advocacy event was rescheduled, some people could not return on the new date, and the private room at the Capitol reduced public visibility.This paper does not claim that the practice was effective in a research sense. Instead, it offers a careful description of what was done, why it was done, and what future research could study. The project may be useful for art therapists and community partners who want to combine creative practice, mutual care, and social justice work.