Health & Wellness through the Arts
The Arts Council’s Health and Wellness through the Arts program connects artists, arts organizations and health service providers to deliver creative opportunities to constituents managing a decline in health, living with a temporary or permanent physical, emotional or cognitive disability, or wishing to improve daily life.
Participation in the arts has a direct effect on improving the health and wellbeing of every individual.
Benefits
The National Endowment for the Arts’ Staying Engaged Study reports that creative endeavors lead to higher cognitive skills, lower blood pressure, lower heart rates, and increased endorphins (needed for pain management). Additionally, the North Dakota Council on the Arts’ Art for Life Program Guide affirms that arts participation decreases the impact of loneliness, boredom, and helplessness.
The Arts Council believes that…
- Art is part of wellbeing, and programs should not focus on illness, disability or loss.
- Program participants are not ill, but participate in creative activities that increase their health and wellbeing.
- Health and wellness is a proactive experience, and arts programs are not a reaction to a health challenge but part of a healthy lifestyle.
- The most successful programs are collaborations between an artist, an arts organization and a health service provider from idea through planning to execution and evaluation.
Join the Conversation
The Health & Wellness Network is comprised of individuals who are interested in Health & Wellness through the Arts and represent the variety of stakeholders from the field including artists, art therapists, people in aging, veterans, and/or developmental disabilities services, and people involved in the creative aging movement. It operates as a network to receive emails, participate in conference calls and share resources and ideas. We currently have over 150 participants. If you are interested in joining, please contact Annie Hatch.
Network activities include:
- Monthly email updates
- Quarterly web socials centered on a topic or theme
- Opportunities to participate in planning meetings and pilot programs
Survey of Wyoming’s Health & Wellness Interest and Activities
Resources
The National Endowment for the Arts’ Office of Accessibility is the advocacy-technical assistance arm of the Arts Endowment to make the arts accessible for people with disabilities, older adults, veterans, and people living in institutions.
The National Center for Creative Aging is dedicated to fostering an understanding of the vital relationship between creative expression and healthy aging, and to developing programs that build upon this understanding. It offers:
Lifetime Arts’ mission is to encourage creative aging by promoting the inclusion of professional arts programs in organizations that serve older adults; to prepare artists to develop the creative capacity of older adult learners; and to foster lifelong learning in and through the arts by increasing opportunities for participation in community based programming.
The National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military advances the arts in healthcare, healing, and well-being for military service members, veterans, their families and caregivers.
VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, was founded more than 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to provide arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increase access to the arts for all.