AIM sparks ideas for creativity
Creative for Health launches prompts for patients, visitors and staff
Adria Klausner, artist-in-residence, responds to a creativity prompt during an AIM workshop.
Mindy Miller
The UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine team recognizes the importance of creativity. Art-making can help patients take their minds off what they’re going through and transform their hospital experience. It can also create a bond among faculty and staff.
In July the AIM team expanded its Creative for Health program, encouraging patients, visitors, faculty and staff to participate in creativity prompts with a quarterly theme — Community, Gratitude, Creativity and Hope.
“Creativity promotes self-care,” said Dylan Klempner, the AIM writer-in-residence and visual artist who developed the prompts. “This is essentially a creative challenge that we wanted to extend to the UF Health community and staff.”
The quarterly themes and exercises are meant to inspire art-making, which can be expressed in the form of a sketch, painting, watercolor, collage, photograph, print, sculpture, literary piece or computer-generated image. The team also encourages engaging in performing arts.
“By creating themes to work with, we hope it will act as an inspiration for somebody who is interested in creating art for his or her health,” said Kris Sullivan, AIM program coordinator.
Each theme correlates with a specific time of the year. Community was the first theme and encouraged UF Health faculty and staff to connect with patients and visitors in the summer and early fall.
The Gratitude theme coincided with the holidays from October through December.
The current theme, Creativity, runs through March and ushers in 352Creates — a communitywide art-making event that encourages people in the 352 Gainesville and North Central Florida area code to engage in creativity to promote health.
AIM artists are using the prompts at workshops and for short, creative exercises at UF Health facilities. The artists read the prompts — a short story or poem — and in return, participants create art inspired by what the prompts described.
Artwork for each theme can be submitted to Sullivan at sullkm@shands.ufl.edu, and coordinators will spotlight an artist on the AIM home page. The spotlight highlights the interaction between the AIM staff member and the artist — a patient, visitor or staff member.
The final theme, Hope, will run April through June.
Visit artsinmedicine.UFHealth.org to learn more about AIM’s Creative for Health prompts.
