The best feeling in the world is when you’ve found a field of work that you’re passionate about that also highlights all of your personal strengths. When I was young, I always told myself that my dream job would include three things: 1) I would work with different people every day, 2) I would be able to serve individuals who are less fortunate than me, and 3) I could use my love for math, science, and art in a way that would give back to my surrounding community. Thankfully for me, I have found that path in health and it was shown very clear to me this week at Winship.
This week, I began building the initials stages of the Arts in Health program and understanding what exactly it needs to be successful. Before now, I had focused a lot of my time on researching arts and health programs at other cancer institutions and hospitals, as well as finding local community support for our program at Winship. As I have said before, Winship has had artists come and work with our patients in the past, but it has never been as consistent or organized as we would like. My job is to evaluate the old program, understand what went wrong, and learn about ways on how to improve it. This week I began putting into motion the steps needed to build on and enhance what we already have.
Up until this point, I only had one experience with what we call “Active Arts”, which is defined as the one-on-one, participatory crafting with the patients, caregivers, and staff members. This is compared to what we call the “Passive Arts” which are less interactive and incorporate more performance based arts, such as playing the piano in the lobby or doing a painting demonstration for patients. Winship has many performers come and do passive arts, but only two groups of artists come on a semi-regular basis to do active arts, and I did not have a great grasp on how the active arts were handled.
On Tuesday, one of the Masters in Public Health students and I had the opportunity to observe a Winship active artist volunteer at the Midtown location for the first time. This helped me understand what condition the current Arts in Health program is in and see what needs to be adjusted to make it better. For example, in the past, the patients in infusion at Midtown completed a large mural by each painting a portion of it. This project was received very well by the patients and their art now hangs in the lobby of their infusion center (picture shown above). The success of this project was a result of an organized and pre-set agenda developed by the artists ahead of time. Unfortunately, we have not been able to maintain a consistent level of organization and project planning since then. There is still an “art cart” that goes around the infusion center and provides patients with supplies to make their own art, but the art cart had not been organized in a while and lacked many supplies that our patients requested. When we worked with the artist on Tuesday, they also mentioned that they usually just allow the patients to develop their own projects. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to get patients to participate in an artistic activity if they have to create it themselves rather than having a pre-planned outline set for them. In short, the two main issues that needed to change in order to have a more successful system were a disorganized art cart that lacked in art supplies and an inconsistent project agenda for the participants.
I brought these two issues back to my supervisor at Winship’s Clifton campus, and presented her with my current plan of action that I believe will fix these problems and help evolve the Arts in Health program. I’ll start by taking inventory of all the art supplies we have at both the Clifton and Midtown locations. Next, I will develop a list of patient-friendly crafts we have done in the past and create a catalog of potential projects. After that, I will organize all necessary supplies for each project in separate bins. My plan is to have a list of at least 20 projects mapped out and set 5 of them aside for each month that will go on rotation each week. Then, about every month we will cycle in a new set of 5 crafts from the 20 we have created, that way will have a set agenda for projects that should last us about 4 months. By the time we use all 20 projects, we will hopefully have more artist volunteers working at Winship who can assist us in developing new crafts for our patients, caregivers, and staff members. Also, by this time we will hopefully have a better idea of what projects the participants enjoy more than others by conducting another evaluation and we can create a curriculum that caters more to their own artistic desires.
The Arts in Health program at Winship has already done so much to improve the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of our patients, caregivers, and staff members. It is my job to ensure the future of this program by building a sustainable base and providing it with a pathway towards consistent improvement and success.