When people come together in community to practice critical inquiry, they develop a capacity to see, reflect, and become subjects of their own development. This article describes arts-based participatory action research in partnership with a nongovernmental organization in Central America. Creative art therapy was culturally adapted and practiced on the macro level to facilitate a community's art-based research, achieving outcomes that contributed to social action and transformation. Popular education, a grassroots pedagogy that aims to transform oppressive power structures, reinforced group norms and facilitation. The results showed that community-based creative art therapy in participatory action research strengthened the personal, spiritual, and social development of the co-researchers, which in turn multiplied broader impacts on their communities. (Contains 7 figures and 1 table.)