I coordinated the program "Vital Signs: Cleveland Museum of Art Programs for Healthcare Professionals." Over the course of almost 3 years, we partnered with 5 different healthcare education institutions and served nearly 900 healthcare professionals. These included physicians, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, physical therapists, and undergraduate healthcare students. The goal of the program was to address observation skills, self-knowledge, stereotyping, teamwork, communication, and empathy.
This pilot program of arts integration with healthcare education has continued at the CMA with its updated name “Art and Insight.”
I worked with Laura and Caroline to develop the program and to secure partners in healthcare education.
Healthcare participants closely examined mystery objects. They were to use Visual Thinking Strategies to first look and describe the physical traits of the object. Those careful observations could then inform their hypotheses about the object.
We averaged 2 to 3 hour sessions with the healthcare participants. We spent the majority of the time doing gallery activities that involved observation skills, communication skills, considering multiple perspectives, cultural awareness, and empathetic response.
Our programming for Vital Signs focused on sensory engagement, especially visual, sound, and movement. We partnered with musicians Erica Snowden and Ariel Clayton who developed live music programming that demonstrated the affect of sound on our visual and emotional experience.
Healthcare participants had a session on contour drawing. The central idea is that contour drawing can be meditative and a way to record information without bias or symbols.