and the number is growing. One of the leading institutions studying
how art can assist in recovery is the University of Florida's Arts
and Medicine program, which offers its own degree. Jeffrey Brown
recently visited the artists and residents helping to heal. It's
part of our arts and culture series.
Canvas.
Okay, look out Good
entire life. 18 year old Kinsey Bogart has come to the hospital three
days a week for more than four hours at a time for dialysis.
Attached to a machine, which saves her life and here at the University
of Florida Shan's hospitals. Part of Kinsey's therapy also includes
art.
Today. She and fellow patient Andy Herrera raise our painting while
undergoing treatment, painting, drawing sculpting crafts.
Sarah Hines is an artist in her own right, some of her glass blown
works or elsewhere in the hospital.
And an artist in residence, working three days a week with patients
and families, including Kwan Howard and his mother, Shantel Davis.
Months after a stroke in March, Kwan suffers from expressive aphasia.
A communication disorder that makes it difficult to speak
and music.
Have a way of taking us outside of ourselves.
Um
So Kwan can get out of these four walls when he's painting this owl
like Sarah, working with Sarah.
We have a good time We laugh a lot, huh?
It's escapism. It's It's a distraction, but it's a connection. Most
of all
troubles will come
They will time. Michael Slater is a musician in residence performing
for and sometimes with patients. People are very vulnerable here.
I'm always surprised how many people are willing to welcome me into
their room. Many, many people, most people say yes and want music.
In these dire moments, and in what might be the most stressful time
of their life.
We watched Claytor sing for Dave Derbyshire, a 68 year old patient
recovering from a double lung transplant became over. I was at the
lowest point in my journey that right at that moment, it was a game
changer for me.
Yeah, it just lifted my spirits, Uh, exponentially and and a very
dark time in that recovery process. Incredibly fulfilling. For me.
It's I
I leave patient rooms all the time in disbelief. This is my job.
This is what I get to do. That job is part of the hospitals Arts
in medicine program, bringing the arts directly into patient rooms
on walls and ceilings in lobbies and spaces throughout
It began small back in 1990. When I came to Gainesville for family
reasons, I discovered this little arts and medicine program was bubbling
up at the hospital.
And I had what really was my first life epiphany, I realized I could
be an artist in a healthcare setting professional dancer. Earlier
in life, Jill Solanki began her work here, dancing at the bedside
of patients, years of study and practice later with a PhD in arts
in public health.
She is the research director of the program and a leading figure
in the field. No one is suggesting an arts and health that the arts
can replace medicine or health care or other therapies or interventions.
But the Earth's have a place in in the sphere of whole person care.
There are so many ways in which the arts can address things like
loneliness and social isolation. So you do see, I mean, we're at
a shifting point where this has becoming more normal.
It is. It is. Yeah. So we're at a moment where you know, patients
can expect to be able to engage creatively as a part of the holistic
care that they receive in hospitals. It wasn't always that way. Not
only were those things not accepted, they were shunned. It wasn't
viewed as a humane thing to do. It was viewed as
You might actually be unwanted here. In this scenario. Dr. Michael
Okun is a neurologist who had been with the arts and medicine program
since he was a medical student, he says there is now an understanding
that this goes even beyond the bedside human connection. Absolutely.
To the brain networks are changing. And so dopamine appears in the
reward network. We see the network for memory, the network for facial
expression. All of these things change. And as these networks change,
diseases change, and as our brains change our symptoms change.
This Parkinson Patient can't stop painting, so there's about 15 layers
of paint on here. Dr. Okun is now chair of neurology at the University
of Florida College of Medicine and director of the Norman Fixing
Institute for Neurological Diseases.
Where the walls are lined with art done by patients battling brain
disorders of all kinds. Howie Integrated, Would music and other arts
be into
Care. I think it's it's going to be a staple. I think it's going
to be something that's expected that you go to the hospital and you're
going to have access to these things. And we need to think about
it not only just in terms of the medicine but in terms of the healing
and we need to think about it not only in terms of our lifespan
But our health span how long will we live? And how long will we live?
Well, that can happen in many ways to see if music can be used to
improve the experience in an interdisciplinary research, lab students
and faculty study connections that could make their way into therapies.
Jill sake is also interested in what's known as social prescription.
The idea that art or art experiences can be prescribed by doctors
just like medication. It's a concept that's gained traction in the
United Kingdom and other countries, but not yet here. We really need
to explore what would a social prescribing model look like in the
United States?
And even that language you know, can be a little bit problematic
in the U. S. I would think it would be very problematic for many
people. Yeah. So we're looking at models for the United States where
in access to the arts through a health.
Provider can provide access to people who maybe aren't engaging in
the arts yet, or don't understand their health benefits. But we're
also looking at a system wherein it can just provide direct access,
where there's more arts and cultural activities available in a community.
A new initiative in Gainesville called Spark 352 for just that, bringing
art directly to people, especially historically more marginalized
communities. Part of what we're doing is trying to provide activities
and services and opportunities and access for people to get what
they need US individuals to lead healthy lives.
Dion champion who studied and worked as a chemical engineer before
becoming a dance educator, is a research assistant professor with
the Center for Arts and Medicine and Co director of Spark 35 to
to welcome you as part of the lead, an opening event at a Gainesville
Community center, complete with a story circle performances and art
making.
Our vision of how this whole thing comes together is that we see
arts as being at the core of healthy communities. So when people
have the opportunity to engage creatively and the space then
Cities and communities become beautified than cities and communities
become far more active in the people in those communities become
more engaged in their own community development.
The hope now is to use this as a model for similar programs in cities
around the country. For the PBS news hour, I'm Jeffrey Brown in Gainesville,