The Optimal Health Program and Counseling & Art Therapy faculty facilitate partnerships to encourage counseling and art therapy students to invest in their community, fulfill the mission of the school to have a community focus and promote arts engagement for wellness and healing.
Desistance Theatre Project
The Desistance Theatre Project is free for non-violent, adult, male ex-offenders in Hampton Roads to participate in a peer-supportive, collaborative, expressive arts/theatre group. It helps ex-offenders to better understand their own experience; to see themselves as actors rather than spectators, as people with agency and control; and to take positive control of their situation.
Norfolk Street Choir Project
The Norfolk Street Choir Project has, from its inception, embraced artistic expression as a vehicle for building community and affirming the human worth and dignity of those affected by homelessness, poverty, physical and mental health difficulties, incarceration, and public disenfranchisement. Partnering with the Arts for Optimal Health Program (AOHP) and engaging Counseling & Art Therapy faculty and students, participants are guided to relate the art processes to metaphors for life, seek enjoyment, and share intentions and experiences related to their art products.
Engaging in expressive arts allows participants to be witnessed and to witness others, much like the experiences of singing together, engaging in artmaking will provide a community of support and expression. Artworks will communicate their stories and experiences, which when guided by art therapists and art therapy students will be therapeutic and meet their needs to navigate their unique difficulties. The healing power of arts engagement is the heart of this collaboration. In the future, we hope to combine arts expression to include the visual arts along with our existing choir and musical arts.
Beneath the Surface: Visual Conversations about Race in Hampton Roads
An art-based workshop was developed to engage community members in exploring the history of race and racial disparity in Hampton Roads. This one-day workshop will include a panel of local historians sharing the history of race in the area, followed by community artmaking led by a local art therapist. Artmaking will focus on creating a response to history, examining present-day needs, and exploring future transformation. View a video from our artmaking program.
Visual Conversations: Exploring Privilege and Oppression
This art-based workshop aims to support community members in learning about, acknowledging, and responding to the topic of privilege and oppression in a four-part art-based workshop series. Each session will include a 30-minute presentation on topics related to privilege, oppression, intersectionality, gender identity, colorism, and sexual orientation. Following each presentation, participants will reflect through artmaking facilitated by an art therapist.
Racism is a Public Health Crisis: We Must A.R.T. (Articulate, Review and Tackle)
This collaborative community arts workshop series was developed by NSU and EVMS faculty to support public awareness of the impact of racism on the health and well-being of communities of color. This workshop series is specifically designed for healthcare professionals who are critical to ensuring equity in healthcare. Each workshop will include a 30-minute presentation followed by reflective art-making facilitated by an art therapist.
Topics will include the impact of racism on (1) stress, (2) obesity, and (3) cardiovascular disease & hypertension among the African American community. The A.R.T. project is made possible by the Joint School of Public Health Initiative, the Center for Excellence in Minority Health Disparities, and the Center for Public Health Initiatives at NSU.
Bobby Levin Expressions of Cancer Project
The Bobby Levin Expressions of Cancer Project intends to assist patients, survivors, and care partners with processing their lived experiences related to cancer. Facilitated by licensed, board certified art therapists and student assistants from the Counseling & Art Therapy program at Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University. The program consisted of two workshops, each made up of four sessions.
