I’ve been neglecting my blog since I started my clinical practicum; many-parts patient privacy, ten-parts patient logs, two-parts back-at-work-no-time-to-reflect. However, with the soft launch of a project that I have pursued for years, I felt as if the iron was not only hot but ready to burn the house down… so here we go…
Before I started my journey into the Music Healing & Transition Program, I visited Moffit’s Arts in Medicine program. During that visit, I fell in love with their art studio. When I was given a tour of the studio and the gallery of communal art, I was so moved by the concept and the work that was created by patients, staff, visitors, and caregivers. I also thought about the impact an art studio would have made on me (a chronic doodler/crafter) when I was recovering from my own cancer experience. I kept thinking of the idea of a destination – something to literally walk towards after surgery instead of the track of dim hallways around the nurse’s station. A goal or a place that would be the reward or comfort following those mandated, painful walks and therapy.
When I task myself with filling out those ‘build-your-own-business’ planner forms for Back to the Beat, the long term goal sections always include the word mobility – something that is essential for patients in hospital or home care. So when I began drafting a proposal for the Volunteers at SMH to try out a music and art project, the phrase “Art Destination” came to mind. No fixed studio, variable locations on different days, different floors in the hospital.
I enlisted the help/participation of experienced/veteran art therapist Danniel Anthon and the ever inspirational Jack Gallahan and they generously went through the volunteer vetting process. The first Music and Art Destination launches the week of March 18th on the 8th floor between Oncology and Cardiology. A long table will be set up with watercolor paints, a paper block, and paintbrushes. Jack and I will be playing cello music as an invitation to the space and hopefully loosen up the creative muscles in all of us. The destination is open to visitors, staff, caregivers, patients, doctors, nurses – to contribute to a painting, to relax and reflect on the hospital caregiving community.
