National Program Resources

Organizations around the United States have developed programs that creatively bring the arts to more individuals than ever. Read on for ideas that you can incorporate into your own community projects.

Healthcare

Society for the Arts in Healthcare
Sarah Kemp, Programs Director
2437 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009
sarah@thesah.org
202-299-9770
www.thesah.org/template/index.cfm

The Society for the Arts in Healthcare (SAH), is a non-profit 501(c)3 dedicated to promoting the incorporation of the arts as an integral component of healthcare by:

• Demonstrating the valuable roles the arts can play in enhancing the healing process;
• Advocating for the integration of the arts into the environment and delivery of care within healthcare facilities;
• Assisting in the professional development and management of arts programming for healthcare populations;
• Providing resources and education to healthcare and arts professionals; and
• Encouraging and supporting research and investigation into the beneficial effects of the arts in healthcare.

Based in Washington, DC, SAH offers a variety of grants and awards with the goal of advancing the field of arts in healthcare. It also hosts a national annual conference along with regional meetings in the United States and Canada, providing excellent professional development and networking opportunities. The annual conference creates an opportunity to learn about best practices, model programs, and cutting-edge research at an integrated arts in healthcare event. An annual daylong symposium allows attendees to hear from experts in art and science about the value and importance of incorporating art into healthcare. The event includes important educational opportunities for healthcare decision-makers, museum professionals, architects, designers, researchers, and artists to learn about collections, model programs, budgeting, and current research.

Health Arts Network at Duke (HAND)
Scotty Elliott, Interim Director

Director, Pamela B. Edwards, Ed.D., M.S.N., R.N., B.C., Director, Education Services

Box 3017 DUMC
Durham, NC 27710
919-681-5094
hand.duhs.duke.edu/index.html

In 1978, the late James H. Semans, M.D, .suggested to an ailing Duke Hospital patient that he listen to music. The following day on rounds, Dr. Semans noticed that the patient seemed to be feeling much better and asked why this was so. The patient responded, “I’ve been listening to Beethoven.”

This was all the prompting Dr. Semans needed. With support from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he and the late Wayne Rundles, M.D., joined forces to create a new partnership between the arts and medicine at Duke University Medical Center. The mission of the program is to integrate arts and humanities into the life of the Medical Center, providing comfort, solace, and healing both to people who suffer and those who care for them.

From organizing the first convocation of hospital arts programs in the United States to publishing the first guide for developing arts in healthcare programs, HAND continues to emphasize developing partnerships between arts and healthcare organizations. Janice Palmer, the founding director and HAND Director Emeritus, was instrumental in founding the Society for Arts in Healthcare (SAH) and North Carolina Arts for Health (NCAH), the first statewide organization for the field. Linda Belans, who became HAND director in 2003, serves on the boards of both organizations. In 2006, HAND hosted the first training program for Society for Arts in Healthcare consultants to help others begin, or expand, their arts-in-healthcare programs.

HAND’s initial projects included acquiring original indigenous North Carolina visual art for patient rooms and launching performing arts events for patients, visitors, and staff. 

Examples of programs developed since 1978 include:

• Curating artist residencies by North Carolina and national poets;
• Commissioning Wayfinding art;
• Creating gardens and art in the medical center’s outdoor spaces;
• Establishing the Eye Center Touchable Art Gallery;
• Offering movement workshops by American Dance Festival faculty and performers for patients with arthritis; and
• Producing programs especially for employees, including an annual adjudicated Employee Arts and Crafts Show, an annual stage production, and the weekly meeting of the Osler Literary Roundtable.

HAND has built on its long legacy of success with newly instituted programs, including:

• Bringing paid professional performing artists, primarily from the Raleigh-Durham community, to patient rooms;
• Incorporating poetry and journaling into care for pediatric bone marrow transplant patients and psychiatric in-patients;
• Running a pilot bookmaking and poetry program for at-risk pregnant women on long-term bedrest;
• Installing the Poetry in the Halls on the Walls project;
• Producing the photo documentary installation, “Gathering in the Stories: The Impact of Martin Luther King, Jr’s. Life on Members of the Duke Health System Community;”
• Producing “Heart to Heart: Ain’t Your Life Worth Saving,” a play about heart health for African-American women and their families, in partnership with Brown University and North Carolina Central University. The work served as anchor for Duke’s 2006 Health Chancellor’s Summit;
• Producing the annual Colleague Cabaret for staff and caregivers;
• Bringing McArthur (Genius) Fellows and dancers Eiko and Koma to perform at patient bedsides, and for staff and visitors;
• Producing a comprehensive HANDbook for hospital performing artists;
• Producing the seventh annual TheyWrote Us a Poem book;
• Hosting art exhibits for numerous community organizations and individuals; and
• Created HAND DVDs that feature Eiko and Koma at bedside and Dr. John Hope Franklin.

The wide range of current programs include visual, performing, and literary arts, as well as visual arts at the Eye Center. Highlights include:

Visual Arts

• Maintain and exhibit inventory of over 2,000 original artworks created almost entirely by North Carolina artists, including drawings, paintings, photographs, pottery, prints, sculpture and weavings throughout the Medical Center;
• Place original art in patient rooms;
• Partner with state agencies, community organizations, local arts associations, artists groups and co-ops to bring arts resources of North Carolina into the hospital; and
• Produce annual Employee Arts and Crafts show.

Performing Arts

• Offer professional performers at patient bedsides, and to families, visitors, and staff;
• Regularly celebrate diversity through the arts;
• Produce annual Colleague Cabaret to care for Caregivers; and
• Offer Lobby for Arts, bringing artists and artisans to perform in the hospital.

Literary Arts

• Offer group poetry and journaling to patients struggling with acute psychiatric disorders;
• Offer journaling, poetry and personal book-making opportunities for at-risk pregnant women on long-term bed-rest;
• Provide free journals to patients, with guides for using them;
• Curate Poetry on the Walls exhibits in the Medical Center;
• Produce biannual poetry contest, open to patients, staff, and visitors, and publish related chapbook, and
• Facilitate weekly lunchtime Osler Literary Roundtable, which features open readings and short story discussions by emerging and established poets and writers.

Eye Center Visual Arts

• Feature a specially chosen Touchable Art Gallery collection;
• Provide hands-on art activities for children awaiting surgery or doctor visits;
• Exhibit works created by artists who are visually impaired;
• Engage volunteer gallery docents who explain the artwork to visitors;
• Enhance public waiting areas through artwork placements;
• Curate changing three-dimensional media exhibits by local and regional artists; and
• House permanent collection of two- and three-dimensional art.

The C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth Healing and the Arts
C. Everett Koop Institute
Susan A. Wills, Executive Assistant to the Senior Scholar

Dartmouth College
Dartmouth Medical School
7025 Parker House
Hanover, NH 03755
603-646-9890
Susan.a.wills@dartmouth.edu

The C. Everett Koop Institute launched the Healing and the Arts program in April 1995. Healing and the Arts explores and evaluates the potential for using the arts and humanities in pursuit of the following goals:

• Building more effective doctor-patient relationships;
• Enhancing medical education;
• Supporting the process of healing; and
• Promoting good health habits.

A joint activity by the Dartmouth Medical School and the C. Everett Koop Institute, Healing and the Arts explores the use of the arts and humanities to enhance medical education and support the process of healing. Healing and the Arts works with and is a member of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center Arts, a committee that organizes in-patient arts and humanities activities at the medical center.

To achieve its objectives, Healing and the Arts develops and tests model programs to further existing initiatives, and links people and programs that examine the interface between the arts and health care. The Institute promotes the results of this work to both targeted and general audiences, in addition to assisting others wishing to develop arts and humanities wellness activities.

In cooperation with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Arts and Volunteer Services, Healing and the Arts helped create ArtCare, a program designed to improve patient morale and enhance the process of healing. The active participation of medical students, patients, artists, hospital volunteers, and health care professionals, was integral to the creation of ArtCare.

The Healing and the Arts program also seeks artists around the nation who have dedicated some of their work to art as a process, or a study, of healing, with the aim of creating an Art of Healing Gallery. First serving as a collection point for some of these works, the gallery will eventually become a full-fledged online gallery. Visitors to the website are invited to enjoy the work of these artists—and to provide suggestions or submissions for addition to the collection.

Hospital Audiences, Inc.

Michael Jon Spencer, Founder and Executive Director

548 Broadway, 3rd Floor,
New York, NY 10012
hai@hospaud.org

Hospital Audiences, Inc. (HAI), a not-for-profit organization founded in 1969 by Michael Jon Spencer, annually touches the lives of more than 400,000 people in the New York City community whose access to the arts has been limited by health, age or income. HAI reaches out to the frail elderly, mentally and physically disabled, seriously ill children, and youth in grades K-12 by providing cultural access through music, dance, theatre, and the visual arts. Services include tickets to cultural events; arts workshops; on-site performances of music, theater and dance; audio description for visually impaired theater-goers; youth-leadership, conflict resolution, HIV and life-skills workshops using role play techniques; and transportation for people with disabilities on two specially designed buses.

Since its inception, HAI has reached an aggregate audience totaling more than 11 million at more than 363,000 cultural events. Working in partnership with donors and supporters, HAI relies on the talent and creativity of hundreds of artists and performers to deliver arts services that improve the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. Its work is made possible by city, state and federal agencies as well as foundation, corporate and individual support. The goals of HAI are to bring hope and inspiration by providing access:

• To the arts: By bringing people isolated from the cultural mainstream to cultural institutions and other visual and performing arts experiences or by presenting the arts directly to them in the institutions; and
• Through the arts: To life-saving information and decision-making skills regarding critical public health issues, including HIV/AIDS, TB, violence prevention, and homelessness. This is essential for people in shelters, hospitals, mental health facilities, residences and housing programs for special populations (such as people living with HIV or AIDS), schools, drug treatment programs, and other settings.

North Carolina Arts for Health Network

www.ncartsforhealth.org

The North Carolina Arts for Health (NCAH) Network aims to promote, sustain, encourage, improve, and expand the incorporation of the arts in healing and well-being in North Carolina. NCAH Training Institutes assist both established and emerging organizations with growth and development. Each interactive institute is designed for artists, arts administrators, expressive arts therapists, healthcare providers and others interested in topics that address current and future standards and trends. The curriculum at each training institute supports leadership skills and program development, by:

• Providing key basic concepts in arts in healthcare administration and programming;
• Offering continuing education for those already in the field;
• Engaging in hands-on-training for successful programs; and
• Creating strategic networking opportunities

Core services of NCAH include an annual training institute and a website, which serve all aspects of arts for health in North Carolina.  

Programs for Senior Citizens

Fred Waring’s Elderhostel Chorus

www.collegian.psu.edu

Honoring the spirit and vocal techniques of Fred Waring, the Elderhostel Chorus gives elderly people the chance to perform concerts in his style and in a concert setting. Waring, known as “the man who taught America how to sing,” helped define American song through his 70-year career with groups such as “Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians.” During World War II, Waring toured the U.S. for bond rallies and entertained troops at USO shows.

Many of the people that first experienced Waring’s music long to be a part of its legacy today. At universities worldwide, Fred Waring’s Elderhostel Chorus brings together older singers, both novice and experienced, to rehearse and perform as if they were part of the original “Pennsylvanians.”

During the week-long, twice-daily rehearsals, the elderly singers are directed to learn and use Waring’s techniques of toned syllables, which stress articulation of key words. Musicians learn to sing with Waring’s trademark precision, sensitivity, and enthusiasm, and then bring those methods to their choirs at home. The Elderhostel Chorus’ final public concert sometimes links with arts festivals or town celebrations, which bring greater audiences. “There’s a certain camaraderie, a lot of respect and unity,” one member said. ”We’ve enjoyed it, but it’s a lot of hard work!”

New Horizons Music

www.newhorizonsmusic.org

New Horizons Music programs provide entry points to music-making for all adults, regardless of experience level, in either bands or orchestras. This concept, which originated at the Eastman School of Music in 1991 by Dr. Roy Ernst, targets older adults—especially those who need some reassurance about starting their music life again. In addition, New Horizons can provide them with a challenging intellectual activity.

New Horizons groups, which form on a regular basis, perform within the community. While New Horizons does not compete with the traditional community band—its audition process is much less regimented—some people that start in New Horizons have successfully entered community bands with much younger members.