To encourage the growth and health of the individual and the community through the use of creative expression.

History:

Creative Alternatives was founded in 1969 as The Imagination Workshop under the Board leadership of Janet Levy, wife of Gustave Levy, who guided Creative Alternatives until her death in 1992. What began as innovative therapeutically-oriented theater workshops with in-patients on the psychiatric units at Mount Sinai Hospital has grown and evolved into a leading provider of drama therapy in the greater New York City metropolitan area. Mrs. Levy was a pioneer in promoting the role of the creative arts as a healing experience for those struggling with mental illness.

Under the artistic and clinical leadership of Emily Nash, Artistic Director and Director of Training, and the Board leadership of Ellen Kealy, (Board Chair, 1993-2005: now Chair Emeritus), Creative Alternatives developed its unique drama therapy model which synthesizes the arts of the theater with the dynamics of group therapy. Creative Alternatives now offers its programs at over 15 facilities serving traumatized, mentally ill, and/or underserved populations, as well as an intensive training program at Mount Sinai Department of Psychiatry, which is a primary intern training for NYU Drama Therapy graduate students.

Throughout its history, Creative Alternatives has developed strong relationships both among the theater community and among the community of mental health practitioners. This blend of the world of the theater arts and the world of mental health has resulted in a unique organization which brings a novel creative therapeutic model into the lives of so many children and adults in need of discovering their ability to heal through re-connecting with their own potential to imagine and create something new.