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Arts For Life puts creativity, discovery, and joy into the hands and hearts of children who need it the very most.

Every day across North Carolina, the Arts For Life teams of staff members, volunteers, interns, and teaching fellows brighten the lives and healthcare experiences

of children and families facing serious illnesses and disabilities. By bringing visual art, music, and creative writing programs into hospitals and clinics, they help children and teens remember that they’re not just patients: they’re artists, musicians, and poets, with a world of possibility at their fingertips.

Arts For Life is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to providing arts in health programs to transform healthcare experiences for pediatric patients and their families. Arts For Life currently serves four communities in North Carolina, including Duke Children’s Hospital in Durham, Brenner Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem, Mission Children’s Hospital in Asheville, and Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte.

 

Submitted By: Sarah Ness
Organization: Arts For Life
Email: Sarah@artsforlifenc.org
Website: http://www.artsforlifenc.org/

Each year, the Evening of Remembrance event at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital in New Haven, CT creates a nurturing space for families grieving the loss of their child. Families come together to share memories and reconnect with caregivers through a variety of expressive art activities. Participants at the Heartstrings Chorus table were co-creating a song with music therapists, Shannon Kiley and Judy Engel, from the Arts for Healing Program. The song was to be played during the service, just before the infants and children who had passed away in the last year were to be honored by the reading of their names.

Shannon had been collecting the voices and heartbeats of staff members for weeks, creating the foundations of the Heartstrings Chorus recording. From the start of the event families approached the table in a nearly steady stream.

Often through tears, family members took turns sitting in the “recording booth” at the table and speaking into the microphone. Their voices layered one on top of the other in a chorus of loving sentiment. “Love will always connect us.” “El amor siempre nos conectará.” “L’amour nous connectera toujours.” “We love you!”

Simultaneously, Judy assisted other family members to record their heartbeats through a stethoscope. Each heartbeat, stacking one after the other in the computer, creating a dynamic breathing rhythm. The gentle sounds of the piano connected the heartbeats and voices into a cohesive musical piece. Many families had a poignant connection to heartbeat recordings, as they had previously received a legacy recording of their child’s heartbeat during their last days in the hospital.

Later, as we sat in the service and listened to the result of this community soundscape of voices and heartbeats from staff and families, a palpable bond emerged from the grief that had brought us all together that night. “Love will always connect us.”

In the summer of 1998, Miguel was just 12 years old. As a patient in the pediatric dialysis unit, he found the long hours of sitting and getting treatment to be lonely and boring.

One day, teaching artist and Snow City Arts’ founder Paul Sznewajs walked into the unit and introduced himself as someone working with kids in the hospital. He engaged with Miguel in a variety of ways, but quickly realized Miguel had a natural talent for drawing. Most of his work, Miguel says, was “skulls and motorcycles,” which often scared people. He would sometimes throw his work away to avoid upsetting anyone.

Paul wasn’t concerned about Miguel’s artistic subjects, but instead saw that Miguel had a passion for this work and wanted to help Miguel develop it. While he was a writer and poet by trade, Paul realized that just a little inspiration in the visual arts would help Miguel tremendously at this difficult time in his life. So began the work of Snow City Arts 20 years ago!

While being a talented artist, Miguel “couldn’t write to save [his] life,” he says. After talking with Paul for a while, he informed Paul he was dyslexic, which obviously contributed to his difficulty with both reading and writing. Paul worked with him and found programs for Miguel geared specifically for people with dyslexia.

As Miguel’s writing developed, Paul made sure to keep feeding Miguel’s passion for drawing and painting. He found a visual artist to work with him and brought him books with the work of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to inspire and inform him about work he would find interesting. Miguel was also very interested in cars at the time and when a medical student heard about this, the student brought him a photo book of grilles and bumpers that Miguel took as stimulus for more drawing.

More than 20 years later, Miguel considers himself an accomplished artist. He paints regularly and his work is often inspired and informed by his kidney disease. His website and Instagram page are filled with his work, and he considers Paul a lifelong mentor, someone he still keeps in touch with to this day. He considers those moments of instruction and encouragement 20 years ago as invaluable to his hospital experience and credits that early educational work as instrumental in getting him through high school and college.

“Dealing with a chronic disease isn’t something you should have to go through yourself,” Miguel says.

He found the experience of talking with someone in the hospital who was not a doctor refreshing and gained confidence through the social-emotional experience of making art in the hospital.

“It’s a great program. It should be at every hospital!” according to Miguel.

So many of SCA’s principles held true today are present in this first relationship: working one-on-one with patients to find out their interests; tailoring a workshop to best meet a student’s needs; and creating more than just a needed distraction, but an enriching educational experience that helps advance a student’s academic career. The work done 20 years ago still happens in hospitals every day!

You can head to Miguel’s website to see more of his work and to see his work on display at our upcoming Visual Arts Exhibition beginning on April 6 at The Arts Incubator at The University of Chicago.

Submitted by NOAH Member: Snow City Arts

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