Arts for Healing | Mill Street Loft

A partnership with Vassar Brothers Medical Center and Mill Street Loft in Poughkeepsie to provide innovative arts activities for children with acute and chronic illness and their families.

Background:

The Healing Quilt, a community art project, on permanent display on the 4th floor Pediatrics Unit at Vassar Brothers Medical Center was created during the summer of 2006 to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Dutchess Arts Camp.
Children in the hospital, campers and staff worked under the direction of artist Laura Evonne Steinman creating colorful painted and collage squares which make up the quilt.
The Healing Quilt inspired a relationship with the Pediatrics Unit and launched the Arts For Healing pilot program which began in October 2007.
Four of Mill Street Loft’s core professional artists, all with experience working in a medical environment, and hospital staff met during the summer to plan the program and activities.

Description:

The Arts For Healing program focuses on children on the floor and out patients with chronic illnesses and their families who are dealing with asthma, cancer, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, epilepsy, and leukemia among others.
More than 300 children and family members participated in imaginative art making activities during the pilot program in the Fall of 2007. Participants expressed tremendous gratitude and appreciation for the opportunity to focus on something other than their illness and treatment.
Art projects included creating puppets, corn-husk dolls, snowflakes, collages, holiday decorations, planting a flower in a personally decorated container, paper marbling, book-making and hand-weaving.
The Arts For Healing program includes a bi-monthly field trip for the Families of Children with Chronic Illness Support Group to Mill Street Loft for a casual supper and visual and performance arts activities led by one of our professional core artists.

Objectives:

To relieve stress, fear, anger and anxiety for children and their families.
To help children to experience some kind of NORMALCY despite being chronically ill and needing frequent hospital visits.
To provide a respite for worried family members and for overworked hospital staff.
To offer new opportunities for self-expression by encouraging children to concentrate on something other than themselves and their illness.
To help children and their families to feel calmer and emotionally prepared as they face painful treatments, uncomfortable and often frightening procedures.
To provide patients and their families an active, creative and fulfilling alternative to the building anxiety which often accompanies “waiting.”

Goals:

To raise funds to continue and to grow the program.
To expand visits beyond Tuesday mornings and bi-monthly Friday field trips.
To offer Arts For Healing activities to other populations at the Medical Center.
To enhance the environment of the Pediatrics Unit’s reception area.
To create art displays and exhibits throughout the hospital.

How you can help:

Make a contribution to Mill Street Loft’s Arts For Healing Program, contact the Program Coordinator, 845.471.7477 x 18.