Our arts programs decrease stress and anxiety, keep patients active and engaged, and help bring families joy and connection during often difficult times in the hospital. Arts For Life staff, volunteers, and interns, turn hospital rooms into creative studios where children and teenagers can paint, draw, build, write, sing and play. Arts For Life’s visual art projects, music sessions and other opportunities to be creative are all specially tailored for pediatric patients and their families.
Children and teenagers being treated at our partner hospitals can count on Arts For Life programs to support them through their healthcare experiences, all at absolutely no cost to them or their families.
Hospital-Based Programs
In-person, hospital-based arts programs are the foundation of Arts For Life, quite literally meeting patients and families where they are. Arts For Life art tables are permanent fixtures in outpatient clinics and waiting rooms in our partner hospitals. Here, staff and volunteers facilitate creative activities for patients while they are waiting for an appointment, lab test or a medical treatment. Arts For Life believes that art is for everyone, and so anyone who accompanies a patient to an appointment – whether a sibling, cousin, guardian, parent, grandparent, a best friend – is also welcome to participate at the art table.
When young patients need to stay overnight or stay in their room at the hospital — sometimes for months at a time — Arts For Life programs come directly to their bedside. Staff and volunteers knock on doors and bring materials to patients for one-on-one creative sessions in their hospital rooms. We call these bedside studios and they offer patients the unique opportunity not only to deepen and explore their creative interests, but also to exercise autonomy, choice, and control. When possible, group art tables and music jam sessions can take place in communal playrooms where patients can join in the creative fun with one another.
In addition to these core hospital-based programs, Arts For Life may provide other creative opportunities to patients and families as requested by care teams — including support groups, community gatherings, and special hospital events.
Remote Programs
Arts For Life knows that creativity and the arts can make a huge impact for young people, even beyond the hospital walls. When families are not getting treated in one of our partner hospitals, are at home, or are unable to have visitors, Arts For Life offers asynchronous creative programs to keep patients active and engaged in the arts.
Developed by Arts For Life staff and based on experience we gained over two decades of providing arts programming in pediatric hospitals, Artivity® Kits are self-contained art kits designed specifically with young patients in mind. Each themed Artivity® kit design contains enough materials, project ideas, and resources for more than four hours of self-guided art-making.
Additionally, Arts For Life has a robust archive of video lessons featuring both visual arts and music lessons which are designed to be completed with the most basic of materials. Young artists can follow along with these lessons on their own time, whenever and wherever they want to be creative.
Patients and families can also sign up for Arts For Life’s newsletter, which delivers lessons, resources, and inspiration directly to their inboxes each month.
Some Arts For Life chapters offer creativity on call lessons: live virtual lessons taught via zoom by trained Arts For Life staff members.
Heartbeat Sessions
Heartbeat Sessions connect a patient’s music experience with Arts For Life in their hospital out into our larger community. Each pediatric patient who participates can choose or write a song to be set to the rhythm of their heartbeat, which is recorded with a digital stethoscope. Professional musicians then record this song at the world-renowned Echo Mountain Recording Studio in Asheville, NC, resulting in an unforgettable experience for all involved.
Each Heartbeat Session is a one-of-a-kind musical memento; a living legacy inspired by the steady rhythm of a heartbeat.
Heartbeat Sessions not only result in a personalized track but also provide unique applications and extensions for the music education that participants receive from Arts For Life. Heartbeat Young Musicians who choose to have a cover of a favorite song recorded learn and can make choices about arrangement and instrumentation—all the ways producers sculpt the sound to create the effects they want to hear. Those who write an original song also learn about the many facets of songwriting including the anatomy of songs, melody, and chord progressions. For the Heartbeat Young Musicians who are able to join us at the recording studio, there is also the opportunity to observe and even participate in a professional recording session.
A program within our Asheville Chapter, serving patients and families at Mission Children’s Hospital, Heartbeat Sessions are spearheaded by Arts For Life Music Teacher and professional musician Melissa Hyman. When Melissa’s not visiting children’s hospital rooms to share her love of music, she’s touring the world with her bands, The Moon and You and Cowboy Judy.
Find out more about what we do
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