Dr. Savneet Talwar, PhD, ATR-BC, is a Registered and Board certified Art Therapist, Somatic Coach and educator. As a South Asian, Sikh, multilingual cis woman, she brings three decades of experience teaching and facilitating verbal and arts based trauma therapy. Her specialties include training in the Child and Family clinic at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, certified Eye Movement Desentization Reprocessing (EMDR) and somatic approaches to assist her clients. In addition Savneet has been an educator for the past 22 years. She has taught as a full time art therapy and counseling faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, George Washington University and Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. She has also initiated several community based projects such as the Wandering Uterus Project to facilitate conversations on reproductive justice; the CEW (Creatively Empowered Women) Design Studio, a social enterprise for Bosnian and South Asian Women in Chicago and most recently the Mending Lab, a pop up art studio to facilitate conversation on the role of repair in communities.

My Clinical Approach:

As an art therapist, artist and somatic coach my practice is informed by my doctoral training in anti-oppressive frameworks, social justice and intersectional feminism. I strive to embrace abolition concepts to enhance my trauma informed practice and pedagogy.  My artistic practice explores needle methodologies to engage in stitching and mending as an act of slow activism.  Through hand stitching, quilting and weaving, I explore mending and repair as a powerful metaphor for storytelling, activism, grief, remembering  and healing. My passion for fiber arts has led to various community based projects such as the Wandering Uterus Project, CEW (Creatively Empowered Women) Design Studio, and the Mending Lab.

I am also the author of Art Therapy for Social Justice: Radical Intersection and have published numerous articles in national and international journals on ethics of care, culture and identity, ethics, law and cultural competence, trauma informed art therapy, intersectional feminism, feminist pedagogy, the politics of crafting and more. I also served as the Associate Editor of Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association from 2015-2018.