Arts Access

Beyond Fidgety Fairy Tales - The Fourth Mental Health Musical toured to five sites. Saint Joe's in Minneapolis is a residential treatment site for adolescents with mental health disorders. Emma's Place in Maplewood offers long term housing for families where the parent has a mental health disorder. Omegon in Maplewood is a residential treatment site for teens with both a mental health disorder and chemical dependency. Midwest Special Services in Apple Valley is a day treatment program for adults with autism spectrum disorders and other disabilities. Northwood's in Duluth is a residential treatment program for youth with mental health disorders. Surveys were filled out by the coordinator at each site. They all strongly agreed that having the performance come to their site made it more possible for their clients/residents to participate and that they were entertained. 2: All of the activities in this project were done at the sites at times and within time frames that worked best for the residents/clients. All activities were free to participants. Approximately 300 people at five sites were able to participate. The activities were evaluated with an online survey completed by the site coordinator. Verbal feedback was also gathered during our question and answer sessions with the audiences. We chose not to do written evaluations with audiences because of the difficulties we found in our fiscal year 2011 project. For example, one site does not allow residents to have pens. Audiences were always respectful, enthusiastic, and asked many questions. All site coordinators agreed that the activities were entertaining, formatted in a way that was helpful to their clients, and educated about mental health.