Conference Schedule
Thursday, October 22
Registration Opens
Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center Lobby
Welcome
Opening Keynote: “Neuroarts: Building an Inclusive Field to Advance Human Flourishing”
Susan Magsamen, Co-Founder and Executive Director, International Arts + Mind Lab; Co-Director, NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative; Co-author, “Your Brain on Art”
Coffee Break
Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center Lobby
Panel: From Pilot to Permanence: Lessons Learned in Building and Sustaining Arts Prescribing Programs on Campus
Tessa Brinza and Mark Clague, University of Michigan; Ian Koebner, Rutgers University; Erika Moore, University of Florida
This panel convenes arts-in-health leaders from Rutgers, the University of Florida, and the University of Michigan to share field-tested lessons learned across the full program lifecycle, from early pilots to institutionalization. A distinguishing feature across all three institutions is that each is growing its arts prescribing program internally, building infrastructure within their own arts and health/wellbeing ecosystems—creating rich comparative insights about staffing, governance, and institutional alignment. Speakers include Erika R. Moore (University of Florida), Tessa Brinza (University of Michigan), and Ian Koebner (Rutgers), moderated by Mark Clague (University of Michigan).
Panel: Artists as Architects of Future Tech: A Look at the Interdisciplinary Atunda Project
Dr. Angelos Barmpoutis, Oṣubi Craig, and Dr. Jeremy Frusco, University of Florida
Atunda is an interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Florida exploring how artificial intelligence can help protect the intellectual property of dancers while supporting economic health in the digital age. The project responds to the growing crisis of globally circulating dance movements across digital platforms without attribution, consent, or compensation for their creators. By integrating dance, computer science, cultural studies, and legal inquiry, Atunda offers a model of interdisciplinary collaboration that positions artists as co-designers of emerging technological systems—illustrating how complex cultural challenges require expertise that spans artistic, technical, and institutional domains.
Paper Session
“Rethinking What Counts: Curriculum, Culture, and Relevance in University Arts Programs”
Andrew Stetson and Sarai Brinker, Texas Tech University
University arts programs face growing pressure to demonstrate relevance, expand participation, and support student wellbeing, even as many curricula remain rooted in narrow traditions. This presentation argues that thriving arts programs require both curricular innovation and cultural practices that foster belonging. Drawing on recent reforms and student-centered initiatives at one institution, it shows how high-demand courses, campus-facing arts experiences, and low-cost community-building practices can expand enrollment, increase visibility, and strengthen connection. Attendees will leave with an adaptable framework for linking curricular redesign, inclusive culture, and student wellness/success in ways that broaden access and deepen the role of the arts in campus life.
Objects or Organisms: Engaged Pedagogy as the Root of Thriving Artistic Ecologies
Bronwyn Quinlan, Independent
Informed by current collegiate theatrical practice and grounded in the philosophy of bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, this research explores how theatrical education can shift from a hierarchical, ego-centric model to one of engaged pedagogy, where students and faculty participate in a communal, mutual learning process, emphasizing departure from the “suffering as success” narrative prevalent in Eurocentric actor and technician training. By exploring critical consciousness and well-being in a theatrical training space, practitioners are equipped with tools to promote student and faculty flourishing and reconstitute the health of American theatre through self-actualization, praxis, and the liberatory nature of engaged pedagogy.
“The Kobayashi Maru Classroom: Teaching Failure, Creative Risk, and Human Flourishing, or Why a Course Devoted to Mistakes Might Be One of the Healthiest Things Happening in Higher Education”
Timothy Braun, St. Edward’s University; Sarah O’Connell, University of Nevada Las Vegas
What if failure isn’t something to avoid, but a powerful tool for creativity, connection, and growth? This session explores a college course built around “productive failure,” where students engage in high-risk creative projects, including a large-scale public art collaboration inspired by a troll installation in Austin, Texas. Through storytelling, practical examples, and adaptable exercises, participants will discover how embracing uncertainty, missteps, and revision can lead to deeper learning and human flourishing. Attendees will leave with strategies for designing courses and projects that transform breakdowns into breakthroughs—both in the classroom and beyond.
Workshop: Make the Audience Feel: Implementing Cinesthesia as Film Practice
Sonia Albert-Sobrino and Miriam Albert-Sobrino, University of Utah
This hands-on workshop introduces Cinesthesia as a way of making film and media from the body to the body. Participants will explore how film and media create physical and emotional responses—like tension, pressure, or release—through guided, interactive exercises. Working in groups, attendees will translate these sensations into simple performative actions and then into cinematic ideas. The session connects body and image, showing how choices in camera, framing, sound, and timing shape how work is felt. Open to artists, educators, and researchers, this workshop offers practical tools and a shared language for creating film and media that actively engage perception, affect, and human experience.
Workshop: Integrative Neuroarts for Embodied Well-Being: The SOMAUH Framework of Art, Sound, and Ayurveda
Yancy Villa, Interdisciplinary Artist and Somatic Practitioner, Founder of SOMAUH
What if balance could be felt through art, sound, and the rhythms of the body? This experiential workshop introduces the SOMAUH Framework, an integrative approach that weaves visual expression, vibration, and embodied awareness to support well-being and human flourishing. Participants are guided through creative and sensory practices that invite reflection, regulation, and connection. Rooted in ancestral knowledge and contemporary arts-in-health research, the session offers accessible tools for personal and professional application.
Lunch (On Your Own)
Panel: Building Within: A Faculty-Driven Art and Wellness Ecosystem at the University of Arkansas
Bree McMahon, Angela LaPorte, Justin Plakas, Kelvin Parnell, Anoushé Shojae-Chaghorvand, Calista Lyon, Ambrin Ling, and Danqi Cai, University of Arkansas
Several faculty-driven initiatives have recently emerged at the University of Arkansas School of Art that, taken together, point to an informal art and wellness ecosystem. Developed independently in response to the particular conditions of working in a historically overlooked region during an uncertain time for higher education and the arts, these efforts are brought into conversation here to examine what they collectively reveal about embedding wellbeing across institutional life. Case studies address five interconnected layers of practice: Belonging, Pedagogical Practice, Interdisciplinary Research, Studio Culture, and Community Practice, suggesting that a culture of thriving can be cultivated incrementally, from within.
Panel: NEA Labs in Partnership with a2ru
featuring researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Arkansas, Virginia Tech, and the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP)
Paper Session
“When Conversations Don’t Happen: Designing Dialogue in Health Contexts”
Sanaz Feizi, University of Memphis
Many health-related experiences remain unspoken due to the conditions that shape how communication occurs. This presentation examines dialogue in health contexts as a designed condition, influenced by environments, systems, and social expectations. It introduces a framework based on access, mediation, and atmosphere to explore how communication can be constrained or enabled. Drawing on design-oriented practices, the session highlights how creative approaches can reshape these conditions. Through a brief reflective activity and collective mapping, participants will explore how small design interventions can expand possibilities for dialogue and support more inclusive, equitable engagement in health-related conversations.
“Using Theater and Visual Arts to Capture Community Voices and Advance Health Equity”
Brianna Smith and Marcel Foster, Performance Hypothesis, LLC
The arts have the power to unite communities, inform, and spark positive health behaviors in accessible and culturally responsive ways. Additionally, the arts can be harnessed for the purpose of research and evaluation. During this session, we’ll present on Thriving Together Atlanta, a Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge Project. Featuring theater, murals, and other art forms, this project brought together community members to engage in meaningful dialogue about health equity and creating change. We invite you to join our session and learn more about how art can both enhance public health programming and serve as an evaluation tool.
Workshop: Caring for Caregivers: Using Dance as Self-Care for Health Care Providers
Rachel Symons, dance instructor
Rachel Symons, EMF, ASMP, teaches adaptive dance classes using storytelling and play for people living with disabilities. This workshop focuses on practical applications of dance for those working in health care or in caregiving capacities by providing usable guided practices to regain sense of self, reduce overwhelm, and reconnect with our bodies through joyful movement.
Workshop: Graphic medicine: Teaching comic memoir as a form of self-expression in non-arts courses
Megan Halpern, Michigan State University
This workshop on graphic medicine will guide participants through a series of scaffolded activities to create a short graphic memoir (comic) of an experience related to healthcare. These activities invite individuals without an arts background to engage in art as a way of knowing, to experience creative expression, and to reflect on how such expressions can inform their identities. Participants will also discuss ways of integrating arts practices into non-arts courses, including strategies for helping students overcome fear and other barriers, assessing student work, and centering expression, experience, and process rather than mastery.
Workshop: Listening for a Change
Virginia Murphy, Gio Lopez, Terric Edwards, Dabrell Thompson, and Vintrell Johnson, Everystory
“Listening For A Change is a dynamic workshop and performance experience designed for students and professionals who work with and within diverse communities. Through Playback Theatre and research-based techniques, this workshop helps participants develop cultural humility, deepen empathy, and foster authentic connection across lines of difference.
This immersive session begins with an -hour workshop that introduces participants to the core practices of empathic listening and cultural humility. Facilitated by Playback theatre practitioners, the session explores how psychological safety, vulnerability, and presence contribute to stronger relationships, healthier work environments, and higher levels of community well being.
Short Break
“Well-Being Concerts: From Carnegie Hall to Campus”
Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Concerts combine world-class musical performances with elements of self-care and mindfulness, animated by evidence that music helps people heal and thrive. Each concert creates an immersive, nurturing space in which audiences and performers share in the soul-nourishing benefits of music, create shared experiences, and explore tools for well-being that last long after the performance. On campus these concerts can bring together disparate divisions, including arts presenters, schools of music, student health and mental health services, medical schools, researchers, and leadership, in using the arts to help students, faculty, and communities flourish.
The session, created especially for the a2ru conference, will include a brief introduction to the history, design and methodology behind Well-Being Concerts, a 40-minute Well-Being Concert experience, and a panel discussion among the performers, Carnegie Hall staff, and representatives from universities already bringing these Well-Being Concerts to their own campuses.
The concert will feature University of Memphis faculty Marcin Jozef Arendt (violin) and Alvie Givhan (piano) performing repertoire to be announced; Arendt and Givhan are also members of the Iris Collective, a Memphis-based organization connecting music and medicine as part of their broader mission to create “transformation through music and partnership across Greater Memphis.” The concert will be hosted by Ian Koebner, Strategic Advisor for Health and wellness programs at Carnegie Hall and the Chair and Endowed Associate Professor in Arts in Health at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of Arts.
Reception
Friday, October 23
Registration Opens
Plenary: Federal Research Funding for the Arts in Health: the NIH and the NEA
Panelists:
Wen G. Chen, Ph.D., National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
Dana Greene-Schloesser, Ph.D., National Institutes of Health’s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR)
Sunil Iyengar, director of Research & Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Representative from the NEA and the NIH will discuss funding opportunities and examples of recent and ongoing research projects at the intersection of the arts and health. This session will be moderated by Debra Burns, Dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts at the University of Memphis.
Coffee Break
Panel: Healing Arts Chicago: A Model for Intergovernmental Collaboration in Arts & Health
Meida McNeal, Deputy Commissioner, Dept of Cultural Affairs & Special Events/City of Chicago
Pascale Ife Williams, Cohort Coordinator & Researcher, Healing Arts Chicago
Francisco Rodriguez, Clinic Director, Department of Public Health/City of Chicago
Mecca Perry, Artist Community Health Worker, Healing Arts Chicago
Healing Arts Chicago is an innovative creative workforce development program that bridges arts, health, and wellness. The program is a collaborative effort between the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), and City Colleges of Chicago aiming to increase job opportunities for creative workers while building a replicable model for integrating the arts into the healthcare delivery system through mental health and wellness. The program builds partnerships between city agencies, community health centers, local artists, and communities.
Panel: Carving out Creativity: How creativity connects people through shared presence, physical touch, visual immersion, and neural activity
Lisa McNair, Julia Basso, David Franusich, Hiromi Okumura, and Tanner Upthegrove, Virginia Tech; Linda Correll, stone carver
Visuals and audio from the immersive exhibit “Carving Out Creativity” will present multisensory research and art project exploring how creativity connects people through shared presence, physical touch, visual immersion, and neural activity. This panel features members from an interdisciplinary team of artists, engineers, and scientists investigating how the creative process can be experienced and understood across distance.
Paper Session
“Sanctuary Space: Designing Immersive Arts Environments for Student Wellbeing”
Lynn Vartan, Texas A&M University
College campuses are experiencing unprecedented levels of student stress, anxiety, and depression, prompting the search for new approaches to wellbeing. Sanctuary Space, an interdisciplinary initiative at Texas A&M University, explores how immersive arts experiences can support student flourishing. The project combines simulated natural landscapes, musical soundscapes, and participatory sound-making through an interactive marimba-based instrument within a projection-based environment. Students shape their own sonic and visual surroundings, creating moments of reflection and restoration. Developed through collaboration among artists, public health researchers, and educators, the project investigates how immersive creative environments can reduce stress and support emotional regulation, using physiological and psychological measures to evaluate impact.
“Hacking the Built Environment: the East Lansing Downtown Tree Canopy Revitalization Project”
Barbara Pearsall and Hailey Becker, Michigan State University
In “Hacking the Built Environment” (Integrative Arts & Humanities course), we adapted the MIT idea of “hacking”—elaborately-designed pranks that show off technical abilities while also playfully critiquing the university. We’re using “hacks” more broadly: as opportunities for students to intervene in their everyday environments to communicate their ideals and values. This semester, the “built environment” is East Lansing’s urban forest. Through community partnerships, the students were tasked with creating artworks to address the unique challenges facing East Lansing’s urban forest, activating the downtown environment in preparation for a series of focus groups leading to a community-guided tree revitalization plan.
“Why ‘Design’ is Just What the Doctor Ordered for Advancing Arts and Health”
Michael Schmidt, University of Memphis
This presentation will demonstrate that design can help advance the field of arts and health by expanding opportunities in research and practice. Through video, images, graphics, and storytelling, the presenter will share two examples from his work as an artist, designer, and public health researcher that will demonstrate why design is needed—materially (e.g., the objects of intervention) and immaterially (e.g., as planning process and experience)—to advance arts and health research and practice. The presentation will conclude with suggested next steps, including identifying arts and health interdisciplinary research opportunities using a design lens, capitalizing on the convergencies between art and design through technology—such as VR simulations for substance use prevention—and undertaking historical research on graphic design’s roles in patient and public health.
Workshop: Staging Resilience: Cultivating Healthy Communities through Applied Theatre
Jennifer Ezell, University of Oklahoma; C. Alex Webster; Bronwyn Quinlan
“How can the arts sustain public health during upheaval? This workshop introduces “Plays About Recoveries” (PAR), a pedagogical framework positioning theatre as a vehicle for community resilience. Designed for radical accessibility, the PAR model requires no prior experience, leveraging embodied simulation and neural coupling to foster student wellness.
Designed to bolster existing university programming and wellness initiatives, the session deconstructs a “2+2” timeline: a two-week writing phase and two-week rehearsal period. Participants will engage in a “Mini-PAR Lab” and receive a digital toolkit to implement this scalable, low-barrier roadmap for collective healing and student flourishing.”
Workshop: The Four Codes of Creative Energy: A Framework for Arts-Based Human Flourishing
Zack Orsborn, Founder, Like Really Creative
Creative practice is increasingly recognized as a determinant of health, yet many artists and students face burnout and fragmentation. This workshop introduces the Four Codes of Creative Energy—Community, Craft, Clarity, and Condition, a practical framework that supports sustained creative vitality. Drawing from flow theory, polyvagal-informed nervous system research, community cultural development, and expressive arts therapy, the model integrates existing scholarship into an accessible structure for artists, educators, and institutions.
Participants will engage in brief experiential practices—nervous system regulation, reflective writing, collaborative collage, and creative idea exchange—while mapping their creative ecosystems using a visual diagnostic tool. Attendees leave with a replicable workshop model and tools for cultivating healthy creative environments.
Lunch (On Your Own)
Panel: Healing in Urgent Times: The Formation of the Healing & Arts Collaboratory
Lisa Kiser, Carissa DiCindio, Ph.D., Denisse Brito, Amelia (Amy) Kraehe, PHD, and Tarnia Newton, DNP, FNP-C, University of Arizona
Healing in urgent times is the work that we all are facing in our communities, nation, and the world. This session focuses on the formation of the Healing & Arts Collaboratory at the University of Arizona, which was created to unite students, staff and faculty with the larger community and with partners in Mexico to use the arts to promote healing in our region. During this session we will explore how this Collaboratory was formed, the work we do, the teaching methods we use–especially Photovoice–and then practice some of these methods as part of the session.
Panel: Collaborative Choreography: Dance-Making, Collectively
Rachael Arnwine, Kristen Osborne Lucas, and Wayne Smith, University of Memphis
How do we ensure every deserving student has a meaningful performance experience when faculty resources are stretched thin? Faced with a group of un-cast dancers and a packed production schedule, three faculty members at the University of Memphis turned a logistical hurdle into a creative breakthrough: the “shared load” choreography model. This panel explores the synergy created when faculty move beyond the “one-choreographer-per-piece” process. By modeling collaborative dance-making, we didn’t just solve a scheduling conflict; we fostered a richer pedagogical environment. We will share our specific framework for co-rehearsing, blending choreographic voices, and navigating the creative “give-and-take.”
Paper Session
“Performing Art as Witness: Embodying Breast Cancer Journeys Through Creative Research”
Helene Robinson, Inclusion Angels, and Dr. Merry Lynn Morris, University of South Florida
This presentation examines a pilot interdisciplinary, arts-based research collaboration engaging women with breast cancer through creative and narrative practices. Faculty from arts, education, and public health explored how collaboration supports arts-integrated, community-engaged research. A multi-modal art workshop and podcast interviews generated embodied and narrative insights, which were translated into a choreographic work with video projection and an original song. Students participated in the creation of the work culminating in a public performance. This pilot highlights the potential of arts for health collaborations to engage students, audiences, participants, and faculty toward realizing the arts transformative potential while addressing implementation challenges.
“‘every.single.one:’ A theatrical performance from practice-based research to impact”
Cherie Sampson, University of Missouri
This session shares Cherie Sampson’s creative process during cancer treatment in developing a one-woman performance, “every.single.one,” along with the accompanying social science research project that is studying its positive impact on audience members regarding attitude, empathy, knowledge transfer and motivation to act. Sampson will share the practice-based research in the making of the performance by presenting documentary materials, performance excerpts, etc. as well as research results from the study that demonstrates how theatre and a range of artistic strategies can communicate challenging personal experiences and complex issues to foster deeper public engagement, education and understanding on multiple levels.
“Once Upon a Public Health Campaign: Narrative Pedagogy in the PrEP4Teens Project”
Bryant Norton, Northwestern University
The PrEP4Teens project is a Chicago-based social marketing campaign with the goal of sharing sexual health information to teens. The implementation and distribution of the project was a complex, multi-pronged approach across multiple organizations, ages, and backgrounds to create a maximally appealing campaign–with reach to match. The dissemination of this campaign continues to take place across numerous communities due to its universality. In this presentation, the project’s central narrative is examined through the lens of Narrative Engagement Theory, which posits that stories are a means of distributing meaningful lessons. The entire presentation will be delivered as a story.
Workshop: From Flourishing to Funding: How Arts Outcomes Shape Institutional Value
Angela Meleca, Meleca Creative
This workshop explores how arts-based outcomes such as wellbeing, empathy, and belonging can move from being recognized as meaningful to being valued within institutional systems.
While creative work is widely understood to support human flourishing, it is often not measured or positioned in ways that influence decision-making, funding, or long-term sustainability.
Participants will learn how to translate the outcomes their work produces into the frameworks used by higher education and health systems.
Through a guided mapping exercise, attendees will identify where their work is not being counted and develop strategies to align their impact with institutional priorities.
Workshop: From Symphony Hall to Urban Schools: Scaling Music Therapy-Informed Education Across Diverse Communities
Debra Burns, PhD, and Jim Pierce, PhD, MT-BC, University of Memphis; Peter Abell, Memphis Symphony Orchestra
Professional musicians as agents of student flourishing? This interactive workshop presents a pioneering Memphis Symphony Orchestra-University of Memphis partnership successfully delivering music therapy-informed teaching across four diverse schools: public, charter Montessori, music-focused charter, and private Christian. Three trained MSO musicians embed evidence-based therapeutic strategies into weekly ensemble coaching, supporting both musical skill and social-emotional development. Participants practice therapy-informed teaching techniques, explore cross-context assessment tools, and examine realistic sustainability models. Leave with concrete frameworks, training materials, and honest lessons learned about managed growth across varied educational settings. Perfect for orchestra administrators, university leaders, music educators, and arts-health researchers.
Break
Panel: Creative Care as Method: Designing Collaborative Arts, Health, and Community Engagement
Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo, Matthew Campbell, and Daria Dega, Texas A&M University
“Creative Care as Method: Designing Collaborative Arts, Health, and Community Engagement” examines the Creative Care Conference as a model for integrating arts, health, education, and community engagement. This panel shares the process of developing and implementing a multi-day, interdisciplinary convening that brought together artists, educators, clinicians, students, and community participants. Panelists will discuss curatorial design, partnership-building, and strategies for creating participatory, inclusive programming that bridges classroom learning and public engagement. Framing conference-making as a creative and relational methodology, the session offers adaptable approaches for integrating arts-based practices into research, pedagogy, and community-centered initiatives.
Panel: Access for All: Building Inclusive Art Museum Experiences for Visitors Who Are Blind or Have Low Vision
Lucienne Auz, Metal Museum, and Adriana Dunn, The Art Museum at the University of Memphis
Museums are part of the arts-and-health landscape, yet access is often treated as an accommodation rather than a condition for wellbeing. This session presents findings from a six-month collaboration among four Memphis museums and disability community partners focused on inclusive museum practices for visitors who are blind or have low vision. Grounded in community voice and user-centered exploration, our session offers a cross-institutional framework that other organizations can adapt. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to strengthen community experiences and staff professional development while advancing equity in art education.
Paper Session
“Music, Veterans, and Wellbeing: A Mixed-Methods Interdisciplinary Evaluation of a University-Based Veteran Band Program”
Tracy Cowden, Jill Fleuriet, Jeffrey Howard, Candace Bowers, Evelyn Escalon, and Aesha Pancholi, University of Texas San Antonio
On-Corps, a free veteran concert band program at UT San Antonio’s School of Music, is the first of its kind in the nation. This session presents findings from an interdisciplinary mixed-methods pilot program evaluation conducted by faculty and students from multiple academic disciplines. Combining validated psychological measures with ethnographic methods including interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, the study examined the psychosocial benefits of group music participation for veterans. Presenters will reflect on what the mixed-methods approach revealed, how students contributed across disciplinary boundaries, and what this evaluation model offers for the growing field of arts and health.
“Composing Care: How Lullaby-Making Transforms Caregiver Experience in Neonatal Clinical Settings”
Sarai Brinker, Texas Tech University
The neonatal intensive care unit is one of healthcare’s most emotionally charged environments and is also the site of our newly established songwriting program. This paper presents work with the Lullaby Project, an international initiative pairing parents with teaching artists to compose original lullabies for their newborns. In the NICU, this practice becomes an act of hope, connection, and meaning-making, helping parents connect with their children under conditions of profound vulnerability. Drawing on stories, songs, and experiences in our ongoing project, this paper examines how lullaby composition reshapes caregiver experience and supports wellbeing during medical uncertainty, and demonstrating one example for how artists can collaborate within challenging medical settings.
“Embodied Care and Performance: Theatre at the Intersection of Medical Education and Health”
Amir Akbarpour Shiraz, University of Georgia
This presentation explores how theatre and performance are used in medical education and therapeutic practice to support human health and well-being. Drawing on recent research, it examines how performance-based methods—such as improvisation, simulation, and participatory theatre—can enhance communication, empathy, and social connection in healthcare settings.
The session introduces key areas of application and reflects on both the potential and the limitations of current approaches. It will be of interest to those working across the arts, health, education, and interdisciplinary research.
Workshop: Creative Practice as Trauma-Informed Methodology: Arts-Based Approaches for Community Health Research
Chyna Miller, University of Florida
This workshop introduces creative practice as a trauma-informed methodological approach within community health research and engagement. Participants will learn the WeCAN Framework (Workshop Engagement: Community Art Narrative), an arts-based engagement model that integrates creative prompting, artistic expression, narrative interpretation, and structured reflection to explore lived experiences of health, identity, and place. Through a guided creative activity and analysis exercise, attendees will experience how artistic processes can generate community-informed insights into social determinants of health, resilience, and wellbeing, and consider how arts-based methods can be integrated into public health research and practice.
Workshop: Between Care and Code: Arts, AI, and the Question of Human Connection
Erika Moore, University of Florida
What happens when care meets code? This workshop opens with a simple but real question: what do you need right now to feel more connected, creative, or supported? Starting from your own lived experience, we will move, reflect, and experiment together. Using your phone, you will engage AI not as a creator, but as a link worker—one that can suggest pathways while still relying on human meaning. Together, we will explore what becomes possible, where the limits are, and how this might reshape the ways we connect through the arts. You will leave with practical tools and a new lens on care, creativity, and technology in practice.
Poster/Gallery Session
Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center Lobby
“ArtsRx: How a University & Performing Arts Center Partner to Demonstrate Impact”
Aly Maier Lokuta and Taylor Masamitsu, PhD, New Jersey Performing Arts Center; Samantha J. Heintzelman, PhD. Ricardo Kairios, Kristen D. Krause, and Karen Smith. Rutgers University
Discover how a groundbreaking partnership between the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) and Rutgers University is advancing arts in health research. Formed in 2022, their Arts in Health Research Lab unites community-engaged practice with academic expertise. Faculty from Rutgers’ School of Public Health, Family and Community Health Sciences, and the Newark Department of Psychology serve as co-investigators studying NJPAC’s ArtsRx arts prescribing program — examining attendance, engagement, barriers, psychosocial outcomes, and activity-type modifiers. Attendees will explore key findings and make the case for why more anchor cultural institution-university partnerships are essential to strengthening arts in health research across the US.
“Becoming a Healer in Contested Times: A Photovoice Exploration of Counseling Psychology Trainees in 2026”
Colleen Avila, Ushta Cawasji, Bobbie Hall, and Madeline Brodt, University of Memphis
Photovoice methodology may be particularly suited for pedagogy in mental health professions due to the field’s encouragement of reflexivity, holistic strength-based approaches, and social justice; the current political moment may have unique impacts on this generation of the field’s professionals due to these same values. This study uses photovoice methodology for participatory action research to highlight current socio-political impacts on the professional and personal well-being and development of future mental health service workers. Attendees will view a mini-gallery of the study’s multimedia data collected from student co-researchers and participants, and gain insight into the anti-hierarchical research and exhibition process.
“Carving out Creativity: An Immersive Experience of Connecting Through Art”
Tanner Upthegrove, David Franusich,Lisa McNair, Julia Basso, and Hiromi Okumura, Virginia Tech; Linda Correll, stone carver
Attendees will engage in a multi-sensory experience that combines physical touch, motion capture, and spatial audio. They will also learn about the arts-based and neuroscience research of exploring questions of how people connect through making and interacting with sculpture.
“The Chaos of Care: Visualizing the Intersection of Clinical Medicine and the Human Experience”
Erin Lee, University of Georgia
“The Chaos of Care” is a surreal studio painting that visualizes the subjective, often disorienting patient experience of medical intervention. Featuring a fragmented protagonist assembled from whimsical parts, a Lego-like arm, clown shoes, a balloon collar, the work stages the body as both playful and precarious. A birdlike figure, representing clinical personnel, pierces the collar with a needle. This vivid imagery mirrors the disjointed reality of modern healthcare. By capturing the paradox of medicine as both life-giving and alienating, the artwork challenges viewers to foster profound empathy and view clinical practice through the vulnerable eyes of those receiving care.
“Cozy Gaming and the Aesthetics of Care in Digital Play”
Jill Fredenburg, PhD, University of Memphis
“Cozy Gaming and the Aesthetics of Care in Digital Play” is a short documentary film installation by Jill Fredenburg, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor of Film at the University of Memphis. The project explores cozy gaming communities as spaces of creativity, emotional regulation, and social connection within digital culture. Through interviews with creators and players, the film examines how calming visual aesthetics, collaborative play, and slow-paced narratives cultivate practices of comfort and care in online environments. Presented as a looping video installation, the work highlights how contemporary digital media can foster community, creativity, and human flourishing.
“Dance and Disability: Expression As Health For People Living with Disabilities”
Rachel Symons, Dance Instructor
Rachel Symons, EMF, ASMP, teaches adaptive dance classes using storytelling and play for people living with disabilities. This presentation demonstrates the evidence-based techniques she uses in her professional practice to create an inclusive dance environment that engages and empowers all bodies, and reimagines what dance can mean for all.
“Helping Southern Faith-based Organizations Reduce HIV Stigma via Photovoice”
Latrice Pichon, University of Memphis; Andrea Williams Stubbs, PhD , St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; DeMarcus Jones, BA, Daniel Thompson, BA, and Marshun Redmond, BA, Memphis Headliners; Bettina Campbell, LMSW, Hill-Hernando Baptist Church; and Michelle Teti, DrPH, University of Missouri
The Art/Poster Gallery will employ experiential learning activities explaining Photovoice methods tailored to beginner audiences. We will feature a traveling exhibit. The exhibit will showcase posters of people living with HIV describing internalizations of HIV stigma through photography and salient quotes from their interviews. Small easels will be placed throughout the conference room for individual and small group viewing. Co-presenters will navigate small groups to rotate and view displays. Once displays have been viewed, a guided discussion will follow.
“Operationalizing Green Brain Capital: A Mixed-Methods Feasibility Study of a Community-Centered Arts Intervention for Climate Distress”
Ryn Delpapa, AR+E COMETS Founder and Art for Climate Resilience Director; Piper Hutson, Missouri Council for the Arts and Lindenwood University; James Hutson, Lindenwood University; and Shelly Xie, MD, MA, Harvard Medical School and University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine
Led by Program Director Ryn Delpapa, this presentation explores “Art for Climate Resilience,” a community-centered intervention addressing climate distress in frontline communities. This mixed-methods feasibility study, piloted with 23 intergenerational adults, integrates climate science with social participatory art to operationalize “Green Brain Capital.” Grounded in neuroaesthetics and the INNATE framework, the program balances the tension of environmental risk with the joy of collective zine-making. Preliminary data show directional improvements in sustainability skills, prosocial behavior, and empowerment, demonstrating that art-making functions as a neurobiological scaffold to build climate resilience and human flourishing.
“Snared: Getting Caught up in the Art of Education”
Joshua Graham, University of Utah
This poster aligns assessment data from a longitudinal study of museum-based arts programming with a site-specific artwork created during a residency at the Montello Foundation. Together, they demonstrate how pedagogical practice and artistic practice become reciprocally entangled.
“Trauma-Informed Designs for Furniture and Public Art”
Rachel Dickey, University of North Carolina Charlotte
This poster displays three trauma-informed design projects, including interactive furniture and installations. Each project investigates how environmental and embodied rhythms play a role in restoring and regulating the nervous system in the aftermath of trauma. Drawing from research in neuroscience and psychology, these projects engage in embodied vibrations which help restore our natural rhythms, creating conditions between unease and comfort, dysregulation and regulation, pain and healing.
“What If We”
Emily Balton, University of Memphis
Emily Balton’s “What If We” is a looping time-based self-portrait that doubles as a practical process model. Built in After Effects with generative AI image and video elements, the piece translates three identity lenses (inner self, perceived self, future intention) into symbols and portrait fragments. Typographic elements shift from “What if” to “What if we,” moving from hesitation toward curiosity and courage. Designed for digital display with original music, the loop offers a clear arts-integrative approach to reflection, symbolism, and motion-based storytelling.
Saturday, October 24
Registration Opens
Panel: Making Arts Integration Real: Scalable Models for Embedding the Arts in Science, Medicine, and Community Practice
Aaron Anderson, Sara Wilson-McKay, Sterling Hundley, and Jason Bennett, Virginia Commonwealth University
What does it take to make arts integration real—embedded, assessable, and scalable within higher education? This panel presents Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) as a living laboratory for integrating the arts across science, medicine, and community practice. We share student-led, faculty-driven, and institutional models: from science communication performances and hospital-based theatre to interdisciplinary teaching, applied arts research, and clinical training with actors. Emphasizing evaluation, impact, and promotion and tenure alignment, we offer replicable strategies for building sustainable programs. Rather than arguing for the arts’ value, this session demonstrates how to design systems where that value is measurable and rewarded.
Panel: Expanding on Arts Prescription: An Innovative Arts-Based Program to Promote Student Well-Being
Sharon Boyle, Sarah Ramey, Sara Schoenhoft, and Kayla Boswell, Ohio University
The mental health needs of young adults have emerged as an essential area to address on university campuses (Zhao et al., 2025). Panelists will share information about the innovative Bobcat ArtsCare program recently launched at Ohio University based upon an arts prescribing framework utilizing self-referral, established processes and collaboration with partners to better support the mental and physical well-being of university students through the arts. Panelists will share the strategic development of partnerships, roles, and engagement across specific areas of the university. Participants will be encouraged to engage in arts-based experiences during the presentation as an example of programmatic offerings.
Paper Session
“How Arts Leaders Lead During Times of Uncertainty to Prioritize Care, Stability, and Wellbeing”
Rachel Debuque and Marty Maxwell Lane, University of Arkansas
This session examines how arts leaders can navigate a disrupted academic landscape marked by uncertainty, declining trust, and increasing demands on faculty and staff. Positioning leadership as a creative practice, it explores how curiosity, care, and collaboration can foster more humane and sustainable institutional cultures. Drawing on case studies from a School of Art, participants will engage strategies such as innovative mentorship, community engagement, and redefining excellence through access and wellbeing. Through dialogue and reflection, the session invites participants to challenge entrenched norms, support cultural change, and develop leadership approaches grounded in shared responsibility, resilience, and collective care.
“Photovoice for Graduate Student Belonging”
Stephanie Selvick, Georgia Tech
“Photovoice for Graduate Student Belonging” engaged 15 graduate students across five colleges to advance the campus priority of enhancing the graduate student experience. Grounded in the understanding that belonging is central to holistic success and that traditional assessment alone cannot fully capture graduate students’ lived experiences, the project used photovoice to center student voice as evidence and cultivate meaningful connections. Students analyzed the qualitative dataset and co-designed a participatory exhibition. Their work revealed the entanglement of connection, overextension, and isolation, positioning graduate students as active stakeholders in a research practice that is interdisciplinary, cross-functional, and reflective.
“Roll to Heal: Therapeutically Applied Tabletop Roleplaying Games”
Hannah Taylor, University of Memphis
Post Covid-19, Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPG) have increasingly been incorporated into therapeutic contexts. Therapeutically applied tabletop roleplaying games (TA-TTRPG) have emerged as an alternative to traditional therapy and can facilitate social skills development, emotional processing, identity exploration, and corrective interpersonal experiences within a structured yet imaginative environment. TA-TTRPGs offer a less intimidating approach to therapy and incorporate established therapeutic modalities into gameplay. This presentation will examine the therapeutic mechanisms underlying TTRPG gameplay and explore how clinicians are incorporating TA-TTRPGs across clinical and community settings
Workshop: How we thrive, here and now: practicing mindfulness, drawing and dialogue to cultivate present moment awareness
Nicole Porter, Texas Tech University
Keeping ourselves well while engaging in creative practice and pedagogy necessitates being present in body and mind. In this workshop, Nicole Porter, author of Drawing, Well-being and the Exploration of Everyday Place, will share mindfulness-based practices designed to support the well-being of arts educators while simultaneously supporting the creativity and self-awareness of students. Participants will engage in a series of mindful drawing activities to foster listening, noticing, and reflective dialogue: Touring the walls (listening and looking), Practicing (observational drawing), Reflecting (writing) and Sharing (facilitated dialogue). Through these practices, we experience drawing as a way-of-seeing and cultivating present moment awareness.
Workshop: Make X1 Song Per Day and Write the Stress Away! A Workshop exploring a Therapeutic Songwriting App and Emerging Feasibility Findings
Dr. Becky Zarate, Dr. Lynn Maxfield, and, Dr. Amanda Stark, University of Utah
Experience an evidence-based songwriting tool and hear from the lens of the community partners, participant emerging findings, scientists and researchers investigating usage on its functionality, scientific rigor, aesthetic and artistic quality, and possible public health impact regarding scaling for anxiety and stress.