502-275-3998 | care@Fw4g.com
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FRAMEWORKS FOR GROWTH
A creative wellness studio where the people who hold space for others can find space for themselves.
You've been carrying a lot. Come and sit it down for a while.
Frameworks brings reflection, creativity, community, restoration, and meaningful conversation into the same room.
You’ve thought it over, worked at it, pushed through, tried the strategies, and taken the advice.
What if you approached it differently?
Through new perspectives, unexpected connections, and stimulating conversations. Just different ways to encounter yourself and the questions that linger in your mind, from another angle.
How We Work
You don't have to be an artist.
At Frameworks, creativity isn't about how well you can draw, what you make, or whether anyone else thinks it's good.
It's about what can happen when you give yourself permission to make something without needing to get it right.
To experiment. Follow your curiosity. Try something you haven't tried before.
Sometimes you make art. Sometimes you learn something new about yourself. Other times, you just create without expectation.
The making is part of the process. What you notice along the way is where the change begins.
Memberships & Community
What do you need to make room for?
Maybe it’s a project you’ve been meaning to finish, a grant that needs your attention, a book you finally want to read, or an afternoon spent creating with one of our art kits. Maybe you need conversation and connection.
Come for an afternoon. Join a workshop. Make Frameworks part of your regular rhythm.
This is a space to grow with purpose, create with curiosity, and recharge when you need it. Be inspired by what happens around you: the ideas, the projects, and the people.
Take time to do what matters to you.
The Creative Anatomy of Change
Where neuroscience and creativity meet.
Creativity does more than give us something to make. Research on arts and health has linked creative engagement with stress reduction, cognitive health, emotional expression, social connection, and overall well-being. Creative practice can also give us new ways to process experiences, make meaning, explore possibilities, and stay connected to ourselves and others.
The Creative Anatomy of Change is our research-informed approach, drawing from neuroscience, psychology, social work, and public health.
The Creative Anatomy of Change Process Framework™
Spark Curiosity → Meet the Challenge → Enter Flow → Gain Insight
1. Spark Curiosity
Experiment. Explore. Follow what catches your attention. Curiosity gives us permission to approach something from a different angle.
2. Meet the Challenge
Stretch beyond what feels familiar. Try something you aren't sure you can do yet. Build trust in your own voice and what you're capable of.
3. Enter Flow
Get absorbed in the process. Mental noise gets quieter, and attention deepens, allowing you to create and focus with greater ease. The experience can become almost meditative.
4. Gain Insight
Notice what surfaced along the way. Make connections. What do you see differently? Consider what you’ve learned and what you might carry with you into other areas of your life.
The creative process gives us another way to encounter what we know, what we’re questioning, and what we haven’t discovered yet.
The research behind the practice
The World Health Organization reviewed more than 3,000 studies examining the role of the arts in health and well-being, finding evidence for the arts across health promotion, prevention, and the management and treatment of illness.
The research also points to the social power of creative participation, including opportunities to strengthen social connection and reduce loneliness and isolation.
That matters. Especially in a world where so many of us are longing for meaningful connection.
What We Offer
Find Your Way Into Frameworks
There’s more than one way to begin. Find the experience that meets you where you are.
Come try something different. Single-session creative workshops invite you to experiment, reflect, and explore without needing any art experience.
Creative Experiences
Signature Series
Go deeper. Multi-session experiences create more time to explore a theme, follow the creative process, and see what unfolds along the way.
Private Sessions
Sometimes you need space that's just for you. One-on-one creative sessions offer focused time to explore a question, transition, idea, or something you're working through.
Professional Reflection & Resilience
Research-informed creative wellness experiences for helping and high-impact professionals, organizations, conferences, and professional communities.
Memberships or Community
Make Frameworks part of your regular rhythm. Drop in for an afternoon or become a member for ongoing access to the studio, creative experiences, and community.
Why Frameworks?
Grounded in practice.
Frameworks didn't grow from theory alone.
It grew from years of making art, working across disciplines, building community-based arts and healing experiences, and witnessing what creativity can make possible for people and communities.
That perspective has been shaped by work inside organizations and complex systems, alongside communities, helping professionals, artists, researchers, and people navigating change in real life.
Frameworks brings those worlds together: the artist, the practitioner, the researcher, and the community builder.
From Colleagues & Collaborators
A few reflections from people who have worked alongside Toya Northington.
Emma M. Sterrett-Hong, Ph.D., LMFT
“I have worked with Toya on multiple projects utilizing arts-based interventions to promote mental health and community connectedness. Toya is a thoughtful, welcoming, and creative community practitioner. She blends art and mental health support seamlessly, building on individual and community assets and values to harness the natural power of relationships, self expression, and affirmation.”
Lesley Harris., PhD.
As a professor, researcher, and social worker, my work with Toya Northington has been transformational. She has single-handedly shaped my skill set as a community-based participatory action researcher who engaged in arts-based methods. I have been able to utilize these lessons and implement global projects, such as working with youth affected by HIV in Vietnam and organizing large-scale art advocacy exhibitions in Seoul, South Korea. Toya is brilliant, thoughtful, creative, kind...a true artist and visionary in all the work that she does.
Alisha Andrews- Simmons
Toya is a talented evaluator who excels at understanding diverse perspectives. She was instrumental in helping our team develop a balanced and unbiased approach to asking questions, ensuring we gathered objective results and recommendations for our clients. Her thoughtful and considerate engagement strategies were key to the success of our evaluation.