Arts Activities Support

Our artistic goals for this project are to integrate high quality, meaningful art making opportunities for people during a challenging phase of their lives. Patients and their families will acquire skills and creative experiences using one or more of the “create, perform, respond model.” Our teaching artist Sheila Novak, a sculptor and environmental artist, will spend four hours a week in the pediatrics units and four hours a week in the cancer center (8 total hours a week) for 50 weeks. It is anticipated that 400 adults and 500 youth/children will participate over the one-year, grant-funded period. The arts program coordinator, in close cooperation with the teaching artist, medical staff, patients, and their program participants, will be responsible for assessment of the project. The project evaluation plan includes both formal and informal elements. The formal elements will measure the number of patients, family, caregivers, and hospital staff who have engaged in the arts access programming during the grant period. The evaluation plan will also include selected individual participant interviews that will measure levels of patients’ and families’ satisfaction with the program and other program specific factors that will help us deliver quality programs in the future. Our evaluation plan also includes observation, data collection and results tabulation. These results will be shared with others by a presentation to the Midwest Arts in Healthcare Network by the arts program coordinator.