Arts for Life

Arts For Life is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving lives and healthcare experiences of children, adolescents, and adults by teaching visual art, creative writing, and music. Each day, our teachers direct art stations and lead art lessons for patients battling cancer and other serious illnesses.

Arts For Life builds bridges and makes lasting connections between the art and healthcare communities of North Carolina. Our staff members are artists and teachers who believe the arts are key to creating and maintaining vibrant and healthy communities. Our programs teach visual arts, music, and creative writing to patients and run five to seven days a week, eight to fourteen hours a day in each of our four different hospital sites. Arts For Life staff, interns, and volunteers teach the arts to patients for over 300 hours each week.

Arts For Life has partnered with Brenner Children's Hospital in Winston-Salem, Mission Hospital in Asheville, Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, and Duke Children's Hospital and Health Center in Durham to create successful pediatric clinic art programs, patient and family art support groups, and inpatient art programs.

Our teachers work with more than 2,500 patients annually, and we see many of those children on a weekly basis. We teach the arts to children and teens who have serious and chronic illnesses, and we teach children who need ongoing therapies and treatments. Demand and need drive our growth.

Arts For Life has impacted pediatric and patient care across the state of North Carolina, demonstrating the importance of support services for patients and their families. Our programs strive to help young patients become strong members of their communities in spite of the struggles and hurdles they face.

Arts For Life's internship and volunteer programs train college students, artists, medical students, and community members in teaching the arts to patients. Through these programs, we have led over 220 individuals in utilizing the arts to improve their communities.

Arts For Life Programming Goals

• Utilize art stations, art teachers, and art lessons to transform and improve healthcare environments;
• Teach patients skills in the visual arts, writing, and music;
• Give patients opportunities to collaborate and work successfully with peers (other patients and siblings);
• Foster patients' visualization skills, imaginations, and creativity;
• Help patients to set and achieve goals and boost patients' self-esteem;
• Give patients choices and sense of control in their hospital environments;
• Help patients to focus on positive activities during lengthy treatments, waiting times and stressful experiences.

PRESBY SPECIFIC

"Our daughter Maggie loves Arts For Life. It gives her creative abilities to express her mood for the day and also allows her an important change in focus when she is at the clinic and hospital. We are so very appreciative that the hospital and clinic have Arts For Life and that it offers so much for our precious daughter."

~Karen and Jeff Goodwin-parents of patient, Maggie

"Arts For Life and Sarah Alexander add a spark of energy and creativity to our clinic which helps our patients cope with their situations. The patients absolutely love Arts For Life and look forward to working on projects and seeing their artwork displayed. Sarah has added an exciting new dimension to our clinic, making us better able to provide all around care for our children."

~Jennifer H. Weisner, RN, CPON, CPNP

An Arts For Life Moment

As the Arts For Life art teacher at Presbyterian Hospital, I spend time with many of the same patients each week. I work with young patients and parents who count on art to help them get through another day battling a serious illness. Last Monday was no exception.

I was teaching drawing to a new patient when the door at Blume Pediatric Clinic opened and Melanie, a five-year-old Hispanic cancer patient, walked in with her usual shy smile and big brown eyes. She made her way to the art table and was ready to start creating without one thought of the medicine or the pricks she was about to receive. I offered Melanie two options for art time: sculpture or a painting project. As usual, Melanie felt timid and didn't talk. She nodded toward the painting project and got started with bright orange, blue, purple, and red glitter paints. Melanie focused on her project with purpose and a serious intent to cover her entire white page of paper with colorful designs. I helped her to practice making circles, long strokes, and dot textures.

When she was finished with her painting, she handed it to me and quietly asked me to put it up on the art bulletin board. Just as I was hanging it, several nurses came out to call Melanie back to the treatment room for her chemotherapy. Once her IV chemotherapy was running, Melanie decided that she would like to make more art. She asked her mom to go out to the art station and tell me that she wanted to make sculptures with Play-dough.

I gathered purple Play-dough and headed to her room. We continued our art time in silence with occasional smiles and quiet giggles. As Melanie squeezed and patted the play dough, she became more comfortable and relaxed. Her little-girl silliness started to peak through her wall of fear and apprehension.

After pinching and pushing the play-doh into the shape of a purple banana, she pretended to peel back the skin of the banana and acted like she had never tasted anything better in her life. This began a fury of banana making, peeling, and eating. We placed all of the bananas side by side and had a fruit feast. She was so excited that she began laughing, squealing, and talking up a storm for the first time in 5 weeks. We couldn't have enough bananas! She made more and more, and then they needed to be bigger and bigger! We counted the bananas, ate the bananas, peeled the bananas, put them back together, squished them, and then made more. Finally the chemo treatment was done and the nurses told Melanie that she could go home. But for the first time since diagnosis, she wasn't ready to leave the hospital. She was having too much fun. She agreed to leave only after I gave her own play dough to take home and assured her that we could make more bananas next time.

It was a day full of firsts for Melanie. Arts For Life facilitates many important experiences for the patients and their families. Our services help young patients through their weeks, months, and years of treatments. Your encouragement, help, and funding make it all possible. The Arts For Life team is forever grateful for your support of our programs.

Shaquez "Quez" Makes a Pantyhose Sculpture

Arts For Life Program Director, Sarah Alexander, places a brightly painted, organically shaped sculpture in front of Shaquez, a 7 year-old cancer patient. She asks him to investigate and see if he can figure out what materials were used to create the piece of artwork.

He picks it up, touches the form, and examines it closely. He quickly identifies two of the three main components - wire hangers and a block of wood. He guesses, but cannot figure out what the third material is that functions as the sculpture's skin. Sarah suggests that he look everywhere on the sculpture, including the bottom, to find clues. He turns the sculpture over, sees an unpainted corner of the material, and a huge smile spreads across his face. Laughing loudly and jumping up and down, he screeches, "PANTYHOSE!" Excitedly, he asks if he can make one of the sculptures too.

As he puts his sculpture together he dances in place, smiles brightly, and announces to everyone who walks into his room that he is making a sculpture out of pantyhose! Shaquez's enthusiasm demonstrates to Sarah that her goals have been met. While he makes art, Shaquez is active, engaged, and thinking critically and creatively. For the hour he spends working on the pantyhose sculpture, Shaquez is able to forget that he is in the hospital getting a chemotherapy treatment and instead, he focuses on the positive experience of creating.

Thanks to Microsoft, Shaquez completes visual art projects with his Arts For Life teacher nearly every week. The company's donations enable Arts For Life to nourish the spirits of young patients while doctors work to cure their bodies. We are so very grateful for Micorsoft's commitment to the hundreds of children at Presbyterian Hospital.