The National Endowment for the Arts is the nation’s federal agency charged with encouraging artistic activity in the U.S., and it is currently doing a truly great job in meeting its mission. As I wrote last month, the current NEA Chairman Jane Chu has made Creativity Connects her signature initiative, but she has by no means limited herself to just one program or policy initiative.
Creative Forces is a unique program that is among the most innovative and exciting things happening in the world of arts policy. The program has tremendous potential to help heal the men and women who have given so selflessly to keep the U.S. safe and make the world a better place. I’m excited that Creative Forces is coming to the Last Frontier.
Creative Forces is a carefully considered refinement and expansion of what began as the NEA’s Military Healing Arts Partnership. Healing Arts was launched in 2011 at two venues, the Walter Reed National Military Center in Maryland, and Fort Belvoir in Virginia. From these initial locations in close proximity to our nation’s capital, it was possible for the NEA and its partners in the armed services to experiment with new ways to use the arts to help critically injured soldiers heal and forge pathways to their post-service lives. This incubation period is now phasing into the next level of service.
Healing Arts began a process of using artistic activity and therapy to address two specific categories of trauma experienced by service members, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and psychological health challenges including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Creative Forces will expand to a total of a dozen medical centers. The program places the patients at the center of the treatment, helping these individuals heal and also generating useful research that will lay the groundwork for further growth.
One of the most exciting aspects of Creative Forces is that it is bringing more partners to this crucial collective effort. State arts agencies like the Alaska State Council on the Arts (of which I serve as chairman) will work with the NEA and the Department of Defense to extend the spectrum of beneficial artistic activity from hospitals into communities. This will have a primary benefit of allowing patients who have benefited from artistic activity in the acute phase of their initial recovery to continue to enjoy the positive effects of artistic practice in their daily lives. It will also expand access to the positive outcomes to veterans who may not have previously enjoyed artistic therapy, military families who are coping with the traumatic impact of injuries sustained in combat, and those who provide essential care to these patients.
The new iteration of Creative Forces at these 12 medical facilities will add creative artistic therapy to the roster of treatments they offer to American men and women who are suffering from injuries they have incurred while serving our nation. This matters in Alaska because Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) is on the expansion roster, and the new program features will not only help the primary patients but also the wider community into which these patients will transition and live their lives as veterans. Artists and arts organizations will be helping these brave men and women, who in turn will share their life experiences with other Alaskans, continuing the cycle.
There are many discrete disorders and conditions that arts therapy has already been proven to help treat and ameliorate beyond PTSD and TBI: chronic and severe pain, sleep disorders, memory problems, healthy familial relations, and interaction with society are all areas in which returning service-members can be expected to find life difficult.
Last week, five of the new venues for Creative Forces programs were announced. This is a continuing work in progress and future expansion is likely, as the proven benefits continue to be documented. The responses of those who have been directly helped by arts therapy provide some of the most compelling support for this initiative. About 85 percent of the patients at Walter Reed Army Hospital reported that arts therapy helped them heal, and such patients have also put arts therapy in the top 10 percent of the healthcare options they have been offered as they seek to heal and return to civilian life.
It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows the news that healthcare costs continue to increase, and the nation’s ability to provide for Americans’ health needs is perennially complicated by skyrocketing costs. The good news is that artistic therapeutic methods are non-invasive, non-addictive and conducive to transitioning to stable and productive life after military service.
Alaska is extremely fortunate to have such a strong and vibrant military population, which makes life here better for those in service and everyone else as well. The fact that JBER is part of the Creative Forces expansion underscores the reasons to be grateful for the presence of the armed services in Alaska, with the social and economic benefits attendant upon this important segment of our society.
ASCA stands ready to work with the NEA and our friends in each branch of the armed services to make the Creative Forces expansion work, and to provide a replicable model to the rest of the nation, so that each and every man and woman who has stood up for our nation is treated with the utmost care and respect when returning from service in defense of our nation.
• Benjamin Brown is a lifelong Alaskan and an attorney who lives in Juneau. He serves as chairman of the Alaska State Council on the Arts.
