The Kentucky Center Blog

Arts in Healing program helps clients with self-expression, improves attitudes toward other types of therapy

ARTS IN HEALING:

Visual and Performing Arts programs help people in recovery

Since January, Kentucky Center Arts in Healing visual and textile artist Pat Sturtzel has been working with men in recovery at Volunteers of America. Pat proudly displayed work by these residents at the Art in the Arbor festival on May 12. The men participating in this program report that making art really helps them approach their therapy with a better outlook.  In the last four months, they have created acrylic paintings, made dream catchers, experimented with drawing,  and created fabric collage pieces - all part of “The Road to Recovery--Past, Present and Future” project.   

Participants in the VOA women’s substance abuse treatment program have been busy writing songs and dramatic poems in workshops led by Arts in Healing artists Katherine Mapother and John Gage, preparing for their final performance on May 18.  The women often comment that this interaction helps them open up to each other and express themselves more freely.

The power of Arts in Healing is demonstrated by compelling patient histories and validated by remarkable evidence-based research. As defined by the National Endowment for the Arts, it is “an international movement that works to infuse the full spectrum of the arts into healthcare settings, including design, visual, performing and literary arts, resulting in programs and healthcare environments that are welcoming and uplifting for caregivers, patients, their families and visitors.”

To participate in or learn more about The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing Program, call (502) 562-0198 or email artsinhealing@kentuckycenter.org.    

March 10: Kentucky Center Arts in Healing to be featured on Kentucky Homefront radio show

We'd love to see you in the audience on March 10! 

The Kentucky Center’s Arts in Healing program will be featured on an upcoming live radio taping of “Kentucky Homefront.” The public is invited to attend this special event happening on Saturday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Clifton Center (2117 Payne Street). Doors open at 7 p.m.

Tickets for the taping are $12, and are available at the door beginning 30 minutes prior to the show at Clifton Center. Seating is general admission.

This taping is the outcome of a collaboration between “Kentucky Homefront” and the Kentucky Center’s Arts in Healing program, which brings various art forms to area healthcare facilities to aid in the process of healing and recuperation. Kentucky Homefront host John Gage, an Arts in Healing artist himself, invited other Arts in Healing artists (Gregory Acker, Cynthia Changaris, and Lorinda Jones) to help communicate the important work of the program and its impact on health throughout the community. “Kentucky Homefront” and the Kentucky Center both share the mission of supporting regional and local artists and building community through the power of the arts and established this event to provide an opportunity for the audience to explore the vital connection between creativity and healing.

“Kentucky Homefront” is a radio show featuring Kentucky's finest acoustic folk, traditional, blues, country, and bluegrass musicians, and its best storytellers. Our front porch broadcasts are reminiscent of radio variety programs of a bygone era. Hosted by John Gage, Kentucky Homefront is recorded on the 2nd Saturday of every month (except January and July). Kentucky Homefront’s mission is to preserve, promote, and celebrate live grassroots music and storytelling traditions of the rich and diverse cultures of Kentucky and its surrounding states.

The Kentucky Center’s Arts in Healing program is made possible with support from The Humana Foundation and the Kentucky Center for the Arts Endowment Fund. It focuses on developing artist residencies and programs to bring instrumental music, vocal music, storytelling, dance, drama, and the visual arts to patients in local healthcare facilities, including Our Lady of Peace, Nazareth Home, The Robley Rex VA Medical Center, Frazier Rehabilitation Institute, Movement Disorder Clinic, Volunteers of America, The James Graham Brown Cancer Center, and the Home of the Innocents.

Kentucky Center Arts in Healing Program partners with Home of the Innocents & Volunteers of America

The Kentucky Center Arts in Healing (AIH) program continues to gain momentum, serving a wider variety of constituents at multiple sites.

AIH currently has teaching artists scheduled for sessions at Our Lady of Peace and the Robley Rex VA Medical Center. At the VA hospital, AIH musicians (cello, harp) have performed throughout the site, including the Hospice Unit.  Recent sessions that have been well-received include a Visual Art collage session, a Songwriting workshop, and regularly scheduled drumming circles in the Substance Abuse Recovery unit. 

AIH administrator Kristen Hughes reports "while I was there with Lorinda in the lobby playing the Harp, a recently discharged man who had participated in the Songwriting, Visual Art and drumming sessions walked up, looked me in the eye, took my hand and said, “Thanks for all the inspiration”.  What a moment!"

A prior successful series of activities at Nazareth Home (senior citizens) and Frazier Rehab Institute (patients with Parkinson's) recently concluded. Additional funding is being sought to continue work at both locations.

With funding from the Crusade for Children, The Kentucky Center Arts in Healing program will begin work in the next 30 days at Home of the Innocents, sharing the healing power of the arts with abused, neglected, abandoned, medically fragile and autistic children.

In 2012, AIH is scheduled to begin working with Kentucky's Volunteers of America program. The primary focus of that program will be 12-weeks of theatrical and songwriting workshops concluding with an informal performance, funded by the Louisville Community Foundation, which targets women recovering from substance abuse and their children.

To learn more about The Kentucky Center Arts in Healing program, please visit our website or contact Kristen Hughes (502.562.0797, khughes@kentuckycenter.org).  

Arts in Healing: Celebrating our busiest week ever!

 

Video: Safiyyah Rasool conducts a movement workshop at Nazareth Home on behalf of The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing program.

We are thrilled with the way our health care community has embraced The Kentucky Center’s Arts in Healing program. That was never more evident than the week of September 12, when the program enjoyed its busiest week ever.

Over the course of the week, there were twelve sessions in five facilities.  On September 14 alone, six different sessions were held in four facilities. 

Sculptors Albert and Penny Nelson led three full days of stone carving at the Children’s Peace Center at Our Lady of Peace and then oversaw the installation of their new Sun Dial/Time Capsule on Friday, September 16.

Safiyyah Rasool provided two hours of dance/movement classes at Frazier Rehab for patients with Parkinson’s. Katherine Mapother held two sessions of drama at Nazareth Home. 

Visual artist Patrice Will presented Arts in Healing’s first session at Georgetown Manor, and Gregory Acker facilitated a drop-in drum circle at Robley Rex VA Medical Center that included staff, patients and family members before heading up for an hour of drumming with the Veterans in the 28-day Substance Abuse program at the VA Hospital.

It was a lot of hard work, but it was well worth it, and we hope the program can keep up this exciting pace.

Arts in Healing: A look behind the scenes at Nazareth Home activities #Video

 

We are so grateful to Arts in Healing intern Lisa Shugoll! Lisa, a student at the University of Louisville, created this behind-the-scenes video with footage taken during several different Kentucky Center Arts in Healing activities at Nazareth Home, a long-term skilled nursing care facility.  

Our Arts in Healing program is especially active this week, with six interactive sessions planned at the Robley Rex VA Medical Center and Frazier Rehab Institute, as well as Nazareth Home. The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing program can be tailored for any population. For more information, please contact program coordinator Kristen Hughes, (502) 562-0797.

Arts in Healing: Photos from Visual Art Installations (Nazareth Home, Our Lady of Peace)

 
"The Vision of Hope" (installation at Nazareth Home)

The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing program makes a visible difference in the lives of the patients, caregivers, and administrative staff wherever we go. And the healing effects resonate not only when we're onsite, but long after we're gone. Here are a few photos of permanent visual art installations our program has facilitated in collaboration with Nazareth Home and Our Lady of Peace. To see more Arts in Healing photos, please visit The Kentucky Center on Flickr.

Our Arts in Healing program can be tailored for any population. We've worked with teenagers in crisis and military veterans as well as nursing home residents and pediatric hospital patients. Questions? Contact Kristen Hughes, Arts in Healing Manager, khughes@kentuckycenter.org.

 
"Journey to the Light" (installed at Our Lady of Peace)

The Kentucky Center Arts in Healing program prepares to work with KY veterans

 

The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing program is pleased to announce that the Robley Rex VA Medical Center has accepted our proposal to begin Arts in Healing activities at their facility.

This collaboration will allow the Center to bring creative experiences to veterans associated with the hospital, potentially including patients with PTSD, in ICU and chemotherapy, those suffering from substance abuse and mental health issues, residential care populations and hospice patients.

Arts in Healing has also has just received an ArtHealth Solutions consulting grant through the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, which will provide our program with sixteen hours of mentoring in regard to creating a professional development program for new and continuing artists. Even better, the consultant has extensive experience working with veterans.

We're looking forward to helping the men and women who have done so much for our country.

Arts in Healing program enters third year with plans to expand services

This letter originally appeared in the March/April issue of The Kentucky Center's Backstage Pass magazine.

 
As part of The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing program, members of the Mark Morris Dance Group works with Parkinsons patients and their caregivers at Frazier Rehab.

President's Letter

As President of The Kentucky Center, from time to time it is my duty, and my pleasure, to acknowledge the partners who help us do the job that we do. That job, as I hope you realize, goes far beyond bringing world class artists to our stages. Just as important is the work we do taking the joy and inspiration of the performing arts out into the Commonwealth, to schools, community centers, and places of healing.

Our Arts in Healing program is a prime example of what I'm talking about. We believe that the arts, by their very nature, can soothe, empower and restore hope to those struggling with health problems, along with their families and caregivers.

In developing the program, we support local artists, provide a service to healthcare facilities that they many not be able to finance for themselves, and join an international arts movement bringing creativity back into the healing process.

The point of Arts in Healing is not that the arts are therapeutic (although, of course, they are). We do not offer experiences in painting or sculpting to help strengthen hands weakened by injury or disease. Nor do we teach creative writing or the dramatic arts because they have been proven to be excellent therapies for psychological issues.

No, we provide arts experiences for the simple reason that practicing an art offers the practioner a sense of empowerment, a control over life that illness so often deprives us of.

The program has been remarkably successful. We have assisted young people at Our Lady of Peace Children's Peace Center design and sculpt a stone bench as a tribute to hope. We have taken members of the world-renowned Mark Morris Dance Group to Frazier Rehab for a workshop on dance and movement for Parkinson's patients. (See photos on Flickr). We have taken musicians to hospitals to help relieve the stress of simply sitting around waiting for treatment.

 
The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing program brought stonecarvers to Our Lady of Peace Children's Peace Center to work with youth in designing/creating this "Hope" bench. 

Video: The Kentucky Center celebrates "Arts in Healthcare" month

 
Watch video!

November is the first-ever Arts in Healthcare month! To celebrate, Tom and Kristen recap recent activities in our community by The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing program. In October, The Kentucky Center took dancers and acrobats from Diavolo to Kosair Children's Hospital and the Our Lady of Peace Children's Peace Center.

You can learn more about our Arts in Healing program here.

Kentucky Center + Diavolo take on Arts in Healing, IdeaFestival, YPAS...

 

[This video will give you an idea of what a Diavolo performance is like.]

The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts has contracted with Diavolo - a world-class troupe of dancers, acrobats, and actors - to provide multiple community arts experiences this week, in addition to the company's public performance in Whitney Hall on October 1.

9/30, Arts in Healing, IdeaFestival Panel: This morning, Diavolo artistic director Jacques Heim participated on a panel discussion, along with Martha Newman, The Kentucky Center's director of access services, and other representatives from our healthcare community, to examine "The Dynamics of Arts in Healthcare."

To learn more about The Kentucky Center's Arts in Healing program, click here.

To learn more about The Kentucky Center's Access Services, provided free for all patrons, click here.

For the IdeaFestival event line-up, click here.

9/30, Arts in Healing, Our Lady of Peace Children's Peace Center: This morning at 10 a.m., Diavolo will peform on the OLOP campus for approximately 100 youth, caregivers, and staff.

9/30, Master Class, Youth Performing Arts School: This afternoon at 1 p.m., Diavolo will work with approximately 40 dance students, introducing them via drills and discussion to the company's technique - a combination of physical stretching/strengthening exercises, team-building and trust exercises, and "flying" lessons.

10/1, IdeaFestival, IFKIDS: Diavolo will welcome middle school students to the Whitney Stage for a short performance and a creative thinking workshop.

For details on Diavolo's public performance October 1, click here.

10/2, Arts in Healing, Kosair Children's Hospital: On Saturday, 10/2, Diavolo will be on-site, visiting bed-to-bed in two wards, to chat with patients and stage impromptu performances.  With the hospital visits, the emphasis is on patient interaction and providing the lift of an unexpected arts experience in a healthcare environment.