We like to describe the HeART of Healing project as an ingenious way to advertise to the community at large, what health care transformation truly means: (e)quality for everyone. Organizations and people who participate will act to resculpt, reframe, and revitalize the health care system.
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What is the HeART of Healing Project about?
The HeART of Healing project is a very exciting month-long celebration coming up this October, 2009. We’re planning live poetry readings at Trimet bus stops; a 112-member strong, Patch Adam’s inspired clown appearance in downtown Portland; art fundraisers; avant-garde minglers portraying friendly guerilla art; a week of movement therapy demonstrations; a four-day film series; and musical concerts by nationally known bands. We’re working with local nonprofits, arts organizations, and health-related colleges to co-produce some of these events. The net benefit we envision will be a huge boost in awareness for all partners involved… plus strides in awareness around the urgency of health care reform, especially detailing how the structure of health care affects artists and creative professionals.
The premise of the HeART of Healing’s month-long engagement is to create a forum in which we will bring key members of the health and art community together to discuss how art and medicine are connected, and, more importantly, how we can incorporate these functionally innovative approaches for the next phases of health care development. Here are a few examples of how we see health reform and artists working together through the various venues throughout the month:
Dr. John Kitzhaber or Archimedes Executive Director Liz Baxter will present on behalf of the Archimedes Movement and its efforts with local health reform, outlining the stages of policy advancement in our legislative system.
Artists will have the opportunity to describe the process of channeling imagination into materials that contain purpose and passion. Moreover, each shall detail how art can act as a means to express personal and contemporary conditions, and what it’s like to be an artist in today’s health care system.
Health care administrators will discuss how to generate working templates to meet the real needs of people, as well as how to appropriately direct artful ideas within the existing medical system.
Art therapists and creative organizations will demonstrate how to use artistic expression to create health and emotional healing through various methods of art media.
And lastly, innovative researchers will describe how artists and medical practitioners can generate ‘evidence-based’ medicine so that healing arts communities can translate clinical and creative healing into words, facts, and figures that funders and governmental policy members can understand.
Simply put, the HeART of Healing project is designed as an informative, working model for the future of art how art can help medicine. This particular pART of the HeART of Healing project has the potential to reshape health policy in Oregon so that the artistic community becomes an active element in discussions surrounding subsequent health-oriented infrastructures.
What does the HeART of Healing build upon?
Founded by former two-term Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, M.D., The Archimedes Movement is paving the way to health care reform, starting with Oregon. Already the organization is making serious waves for Oregon to change legislation and to work with insurance companies and health providers in order to ensure that every person gets access to basic health care – regardless of condition, age, employment status or income. To promote its powerful work and to build awareness, Archimedes has launched its 2009 fundraising lecture and event series and October’s theme is called the ‘HeART of Healing’.
How can I get involved with the HeART of Healing Project?
You can follow a behind-the-scenes look at the HeART of Healig Project here, at our Archimedes subscribed RSS feed. This site is meant to keep community organizers and HeART of Healing artists coordinated during the planning stages and the month of the project. Think of it like a high-tech walkie talkie version, where google documents, and meeting minutes are utilized to make the magic happen.
In the event that you would like to sign you or your organization up to be a pART of the HeART of Healing project, you can; in fact, the more the merrier. You can also follow a “who, what, when, and where” approach to the HeART of Healing events on these respective pages, moreover if you decide to become involved on a more prominent level, your information would also be displayed in these locations, too!
Who / What = Organizations Involved
When / Where = Calendar of Events