Partners in Arts Participation

Forty children, all struggling with a mental health disorder, almost all living in poverty, and almost all of a racial or ethnic minority--were able to participate in weeks-long arts activities with highly-skilled artists from Upstream Arts or In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater in ways that contributed to their healing and growth. We evaluated the results of our efforts through pre-and post-activity surveys to parents and caregivers, post-activity surveys to clinical staff, and post-activity facilitated discussions amongst staff and artists. Through their contact with, and knowledge of the children, clinical staff identified economic challenges, parental/caregiver challenges, and the children’s mental health status as the primary barriers to participation in high-quality arts experiences. Barriers were temporarily mitigated for all children by virtue of all participating in the funded activities. Whether barriers were permanently mitigated will vary from child to child based upon family circumstances and the degree to which the child has the skills and is motivated to self-initiate and self-advocate for further arts experiences. Some children certainly have this ability but determining to what extent this is true for all the participating children would require long-term tracking and is beyond the capacity of funding. 2: As a result of collaborating on the project over the course of many weeks, we established productive and rewarding relationships between us and our two partner arts organizations, Upstream Arts and In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre. In follow-up evaluation and debriefing sessions, we noted that Fraser and the arts organizations had each learned a great deal from each other. In their continuing work, each organization would continue to employ the knowledge and techniques they learned from each other. We would like to partner with both organizations again and are considering how to do this.