Facilitating Creativity: Honoring the Expert Within

Katie Whelan. Artist at Crawford Supported Studio. Photo: Clare Keogh

Every person is the world’s foremost expert on themselves—on how they wish to come into contact with the world, how they interpret it, and how they express their place within it.

This belief is especially important when working to support the expressive and creative growth of people with disabilities. Too often, systems of support—however well-intentioned—are built on assumptions of what success should look like. But when it comes to creativity, growth, and expression, success isn’t a universal destination. It’s a deeply personal process, one that must emerge from within the individual.

As facilitators, our role is not to steer anyone toward a pre-determined outcome. It is to remain sensitive and responsive—to trust that each person, regardless of their verbal or cognitive abilities, carries an internal compass. Our job is to help that compass surface and strengthen by offering new materials, methods, and opportunities that expand the ways someone can interact with the world around them.

This kind of facilitation relies on trust: trust in the person’s ability to explore, to make choices, to reject, to discover what resonates and what doesn’t. It also requires that we trust ourselves not to rush the process. Our presence should amplify someone’s preferences, not override them. We’re not here to “fix” or “direct,” but to support the unfolding of creative identity.

Experimentation, folly, failure, gratitude, and abundance are not distractions—they are essential. They help make visible the preferences, needs, and unique inclinations that already exist within the individual. By honoring these elements, we make space for authentic expression.

When we support someone in identifying their own version of success—success that feels true to them—motivation becomes internal and sustainable. Growth is no longer about meeting external standards, but about deepening a personal relationship with the material world and with one’s own voice.

Facilitating creativity in this way isn't passive—it is intentional, skillful, and rooted in the belief that the act of making is, at its core, an act of self-trust. And from that trust, the real work of growth begins.