About the Program

Our promise: Targeted underserved patients, their families, and caregivers will have sustained access to high quality arts programming and cultural opportunities which are specifically designed to help them communicate and express their unique assets through the arts.

Project activities: Art-making sessions and artists residencies -- in the visual, musical, and performing arts -- lead to public exhibitions and performances that engage and reach underserved populations at each participating healthcare facility.

Achievements and goals: improve the quality of life for targeted patients; reduce social isolation, depression and stigma; reduce stress lower staff turnover rates; and document the long-term impact of arts program on chronic care populations.

The Initiative receives grant funds to support guest artist residencies, as well as convening and trainings held at key hub healthcare sites throughout New England. Participating healthcare sites make a multi-year commitment to providing and sustaining the highest quality arts and healthcare program for their patients, staff and caregivers by: investing matching fees; forming a multi-disciplinary arts and healing team dedicated to working with the Vermont Arts Exchange and its arts partners; and assisting in documenting and sharing lessons learned with other sites.

Examples of Artist Residency

Following are some examples of successful Healing Arts residencies.

Writing Workshop in Memoir and Poetry:

Author and teacher Peggy Rambach offers writing workshops in memoir and poetry for patients and staff that develop technical writing skills and literary artistry. Rambach's goal: to help give voice, solace, and a sense of community and empowerment to people whose lives have been altered by illness or injury.

"Healing comes when we render and explore an experience through a form of art, and in this way, discover who it made us become ... and how it's made us change." - Peggy Rambach

Click on the link to read "The Spirit of Writing," by Peggy Rambach, from The Journal of the American Medical Association.

To purchase the anthology All That Matters; Memoir from the Wellness Community of Greater Boston, edited by Peggy Rambach, visit Amazon.com. This book includes memoirs produced at Healing Arts workshops.

Click on the link to read "The Art of Compassion: Schwartz Center funds writing workshops for patients and caregivers," from Touchpoints, a newsletter of the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center.

Hyperscore Project:

Tod Machover, Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab, with support from MIT graduate students and Berklee College of Music interns, trained patients and staff at Tewksbury Hospital to compose their own musical scores on Hyperscore, a music-composition software tool. Participants comment that their focus on creating a musical piece is at once calming and challenging. In one case, a patient with severe cerebral palsy discovered he possessed a gift for writing music. Though unable to walk or talk, the patient wrote a musical score which was performed live by the Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra.

"The pieces that were composed by the patients on the Hyperscore program were beautiful, attractive and moving by any standard, but were especially moving since few people had thought these patients capable of any sustained activity, let alone of this emotional and intellectual level."--Tod Machover, Director of MIT Media Lab and Tewksbury Hospital Artist-in-Residence, 2004

"The Healing Arts Initiative has provided patients with opportunities to develop technical skills and discover new means of self-expression. These experiences have helped to reduce feelings of stigma and isolation among patients, and in some cases, have contributed to the recovery process." -- Katherine Domoto, MD, Department of Public Health, Tewksbury Hospital, Tewksbury, MA

Hyperscore in the News:

A video is available online of the Hyperscore Project at Tewksbury Hospital in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab.

Nov. 21, 2005, Lowell Sun features Healing Arts at Tewksbury Hospital. Read more.

Workshop in Dance and Choreography:

Dancer Michelle Pearson offers an interactive class in dance movement. In a recent workshop at the Vermont Veterans Home, Pearson showed patients with dementia, and their families, how to use movement to express feeling and memories and to connect with each other in positive ways. Though many of them were wheelchair bound, she was able to motivate patients to use their hands, arms and faces to create graceful and poignant stories of their emotions and experiences. In a final performance, Pearson took the variety of movements from patients and choreographed a piece that told a meaningful story about the people with whom she worked.

"I dance with people. All kinds of people. I think that every single human body is unique - the effort that someone who can barely move their fingers takes, to let me see a movement that is meaningful to them, is very powerful." -Michelle Pearson

"The expressive arts are extremely effective in reaching people with dementia. We've seen residents come alive and reconnect."--Christina Cosgrove, Director of Alzheimer Dementia Programs, Vermont Veterans Home, Bennington, VT

Testimonials

"The Healing Arts Initiative has provided patients with opportunities to develop technical skills and discover new means of self-expression. These experiences have helped to reduce feelings of stigma and isolation among patients, and in some cases, have contributed to the recovery process."

-Katherine Domoto, MD, Department of Public Health, Tewksbury Hospital, Tewksbury, MA

"The expressive arts are extremely effective in reaching people with dementia. We've seen residents come alive and reconnect."

Christina Cosgrove, Director of Alzheimer Dementia Programs, Vermont Veterans Home, Bennington, VT