Living Art has touched the lives of over 1,200 people facing illness and loss. We believe that in order to optimize healing for individuals in our stressed and fragmented healthcare system, it is necessary to provide opportunities for integration and self-care. Drawing on the experience of our facilitators, registered drama therapist, poet, dancer, medical doctors, & an RN, over the last fifteen years we developed structured, interactive art experiences and supported group interaction. These workshops include music, drama and role-playing, mask-making, movement and dance, drawing, poetry and writing, gardening, the use of myth and “enduring stories” and sharing creative experiences.

Our participants report feelings of increased connection and hope.

Quotes from participants

• “I had no place for my emotions roiling below the surface. The poems, metaphors and different creative explorations gave me a vehicle to let them out…The jump from confusion to resolve and vision in my work shows how the act of expressing my despair and pain freed me to take the next step to images of hope.”

• “The Living Art experience was like finding a river inside me that led me back to myself after the shock of my mastectomy.”

• “The Living Art workshop helped me realize I have more choices about how to face illness and heal and live with hope. I am not alone on this journey.” 

Because so many of our participants are carrying heavy financial burdens due to their illnesses, Living Art is committed to making our service programs free of charge. Our professional programming for nurses, and doctors, offered for a fee, is designed to support our service programs as well as provide an opportunity for healthcare professionals to learn and benefit from the expressive arts.

Our educational outreach includes lectures, teaching, publications and exhibitions. Living Art’s traveling art exhibit, “Expressions for Healing,” has been seen by over 10,000 people at conferences and in healthcare settings in the United States and Canada.

In addition to our own program offerings,we also work with hospitals and clinics, other non-profit organizations, nursing schools, and universities. Living Art is a member of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, a national organization, and since 2005 we have been an active part of the annual integrative healthcare “Bridging the Gap” conference held at St. Patrick Hospital. 

• “Creativity for Life” offers an expressive art opportunity three Saturdays a month throughout the year. It provides one to four week sessions featuring a variety of guest artists on Saturdays from 10:30am – 12:30pm.
• “Cancer, Courage and Creativity”, our hallmark workshop, meets for 2 hours a week for eight weeks once a year. (We have the goal of increasing this program offering to twice a year (spring and fall).
• “Gardening for Life” provides a healing gardening opportunity for people with physical limitations to ground level gardening. This workshop has met weekly for five to six weeks once a year in the summer since 2005. This year we will be integrating this program into our “Creativity for Life” program.
•  “Expressions for Healing” Living Art regularly shows our art exhibit locally and nationally. This work consists of artwork, poetry and photographs from our workshops.
• Our community lectures provide information about the arts in healthcare and healing and therapeutic gardens (St. Patrick Hospital and Health Sciences Center and Community Medical Center).
   

Projects:

• Living Art’s work with St. Patrick Hospital and Community Medical Center (CMC), both in Missoula, includes conferences, exhibits and the CMC employee benefit fair.
• Living Art teaches classes through the University of Montana Graduate Social Work Department since 2005. We have also participated at the UM staff wellness fair.
• Living Art offers workshops for professionals and for organizations and we are currently developing continuing education curriculum for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. The fees we charge for this program willhelp support with our no-fee service programs.
• We are hired to work with such organizations as Camp-Mak-A- Dream, the Brain Injury Association of Montana and Partner’s Hospice to provide programming and workshops.
• Living Art is doing needs assessment to understand how well the psychosocial needs of children in our community who have chronic and life threatening illness are being met. The assessment will help us determine how we can work with partners in the community to better meet the needs of these children and their families.
• We are in the process of compiling and writing a book based upon the poetry written in our workshops.
• Living Art documented our first workshop in 1993 on a 24-minute DVD, “A Door in the Dark: A Story of Art and Healing”.
• For four consecutive years we offered “Outdoor Odyssey: Coming Home to Yourself,” a highly successful summer retreat at Flathead Lake for women with cancer.
• Living Art has years of experience producing performing arts opportunities bothfor audience enjoyment and for people to personally experience performing. Our four years offering a popular community performance opportunity called “Winterfeast” is one example. This experience offered cancer survivors, family, friends and professional healthcare providers a chance to drum, tap dance, salsa dance and sing together, and then perform for the community.

Our Expertise

• Living Art of Montana works with adults, whose lives have been changed by illness and loss,including cancer, brain injury, auto-immune disease, diabetes, chronic pain, heart disease, depression and bereavement.
• Living Art facilitates classes and workshops for professional caregivers and students covering topics such as arts in healthcare, compassionate care, and caregiver renewal.
• We work with children, adolescents and young adults with cancer; siblings of children with cancer; and children impacted by the loss of a family member.
• Among our Board, staff and artist-facilitators, we have personal experience with disease and loss, and the challenging process of finding and sustaining purpose and passion in our own lives.
• We have academic training in medicine, nursing, psychology, humanities, dance, drama, visual arts, literary arts and poetry.
• Our clinical experience includes family practice, pediatrics, holistic medicine,end-of-life care, drama therapy, expressive arts therapy, therapeutic movement, massage and horticultural therapy.
• We have professional experience and teaching experience in the visual arts, acting and directing, dance, commercial film production, arts in healthcare, and managing nonprofit organizations.

 We have presented accredited professional development workshops and graduate classes at these conferences and sites

• 2007, American Holistic Medical Association, Portland, OR; accredited by the American College for the Advancement of Medicine
• 2004 – 2007,  University of Montana, Dept. of Social Work, Missoula
• 2005, Society for the Arts in Healthcare, Edmonton, Alberta
• 2002 & 2006, Partnership Hospice Staff Training, Missoula, MT
• 2000, Canadian & American Societies of Psychological and Behavioral Oncology/AIDS, Vancouver, B.C.
• 1999, National Center for Death Education, Boston, MA
• 1998, Mansfield Conference on the Healing Arts, Missoula, MT

Biographies of Current Living Art Facilitators 

Beth Ammons, MD is an integrative medicine consultant, board certified in Family Practice and Holistic Medicine. She has facilitated Living Art workshops for the last three years, working with children, adolescents, and adults. She is an Affiliate of the UM Davidson Honors College, and has supervised undergraduate and graduate students in research. In 2006 she completed intensive training in Arts in Healthcare, at Shands Children’s Hospital at the University of Florida. She is attending training by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, including “The Healers Art” training for physician educators. Beth directs Living Art’s CME and CEU program, and is currently Board president. She has presented CME qualified workshops at the 2006 American Holistic Medical Association meeting and the 2008 Bridging the Gap conference. 

Cynthia Aten, MD, is a pediatrician/adolescent medicine specialist who left practice in 2002 to pursue lifelong interests in dance, calligraphy, writing, teaching, and the use of the arts in self-healing. Cyndy is a graduate of Duke with a major in English, Goddard College with a masters in early childhood education and Yale School of Medicine. While in practice in New Haven, Connecticut, she taught medical and nurse practitioner students and pediatric residents the art of the care of teenagers through both clinical experience and lecture. Her desire to enhance her practice led her to learn and then to teach Reiki, a hands-on energy healing technique. Since moving to Missoula to be near grandchildren she has been a member of the organizing committee for the Bridging the Gap conference at Saint Patrick Hospital and has been on the Living Art of Montana board, working with Beth Ferris to complete the poetry book and becoming a Living Art facilitator.

.Beth Ferris, MFA, Poetry co-founder of Living Art of Montana and past Board President, began her career in poetry and filmmaking with love of the image. She expressed this love in still photography and films of wildlife and nature; including a National Geographic Cover. Her first film, Year of the Mountain Goat, was selected by the Donnell Media Center at the New York Public Library for archival use in 2002. Her film credits include the co-production and writing of the internationally acclaimed Heartland,for which she was honored with the Neil Simon Award for Best Screenplay in 1984. Beth’s poetry has won awards in many contests including the recent “winningwriters.com War Poetry” finalist for “Endless Knot,” and others. (2006). Her research on imagery and metaphor and the healing potential of poetry has helped shape the facilitation of Living Art workshops for the past fifteen years. She is working on a book with Cyndy Aten, MD, You Can Write Your Way Out of This: A Story in Poetry, based upon the writings of people who have participated in Living Art Workshops.

Lori Mitchell, RN, has a BA in Anthropology and is a graduate of MSU College of Nursing. She currently teaches physiology and anatomy at the UM College of Technology. Lori has over twenty years of experience integrating the arts and healing through her professional dance training and as a licensed massage therapist. In the fall of 2006, Lori was one of ten artists chosen from across the nation to participate in the artist-in-hospitals training program through the Creative Center in New York City. She has facilitated for Living Art for 4 years. She co-facilitated a CME workshop at the 2007 American Holistic Medical Association Conference. Lori is attending trainings by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen for Health Care Professional.

Youpa Stein, MA, RDT, is a co-founder of Living Art of Montana and is the current Director. She has aMasters in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and she is a Registered Drama Therapist. Her acting career includes touring a one woman show throughout Montana, Idaho, and Alberta through the program of the Alternative Energy Resources Organization and the Montana Committee for the Humanities. As a director she has been particularly interested in original works and directing autobiographical performance. Youpa has facilitated Living Art workshops for cancer survivors and others facing illness and loss since 1993. Her 20 years of teaching experience includes drama and arts in healthcare classes for graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Montana, and for professional caregivers through professional conferences and workshops. She has served as a board member of the Montana Arts Council since 2005.