a special message from NJPAC CEO John Schreiber

The Arts Center hosts a national gathering of professionals who use the arts to advance health

Imagine you’re watching TV one night, and one of those ads pops up, urging you to talk to your doctor about some new medication.

It sure sounds promising, but you know what’s coming after the slow-motion shots of happy folks practicing yoga and romping with adorable children: The announcer’s voice will speed up a bit as he powers through a long list of ailments this treatment may cause.

But wait – that doesn’t happen this time!

“Side effects,” the announcer intones, “may include joy, wonder, fun, enhanced creativity and a deeper sense of connection to your community.”

If someone made an ad for the health benefits of engaging with the arts—anything from taking in a concert to wandering through an art museum—those are precisely the side effects you’d be “warned” about.

And all of them are pretty great. As an arts lover, you already know that the arts make you feel good. Anyone whose spirits have been lifted by a gospel choir, or a ballet troupe, or a blues band when it’s really cooking, has felt that.

But we know now that the arts benefit not just our souls, but our bodies and brains as well. The latest research in the growing field of arts in health shows that the arts protect our physical, social and mental health; a dose or two of the arts per month has been shown to have health benefits comparable to exercising for an hour a week. And actively participating in creative hobbies—taking a dance class, practicing scales on a guitar or piano—can reduce your risk of developing depression by 48%.

Which is why, for the past three years, NJPAC’s Arts & Well-Being department has been working with Greater Newark health care providers, health insurers, community groups, city administrators and many other partners to facilitate access to arts activities for folks who could benefit most from the health boost the arts provide.

Our work in this space, especially NJPAC’s arts prescription program ArtsRx—which allows health and social care providers at several organizations, from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey to Rutgers University-Newark, to prescribe six months of participation in arts activities at city cultural institutions, just as they might refer a patient to physical therapy—has been written up in The New York Times and discussed on NPR.

We’ve taken such a deep dive into actively finding ways to use the arts to improve community health outcomes that our in-house expert on arts and health, Aly Maier Lokuta, has consulted with arts organizations around the country, advising them on ways to approach their programming as a health benefit for their own communities.

And this fall, arts organizations from around the country—as well as artists, teachers, community organizers and healthcare workers and administrators—will come to Newark when NJPAC hosts the third Creating Healthy Communities: Arts in Public Health Convening on our campus October 14 through 16, in partnership with the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine.

“We really believe that performing arts centers are public health centers. In some ways, we’re really not doing anything different — by presenting arts programming, we’re providing the health benefits of engaging in the arts to everyone in that theater,” Aly says.

“But at the same time, knowing that the arts are good for our health and knowing that there’s still great inequity in who gets to access the arts—whether through the availability of arts education, or simply through having the money and time to engage in the arts—we are intentionally developing programs to create a pathway to arts access. And in that way NJPAC, and any cultural organization, can advance health equity,” she adds.

The Creating Healthy Communities convening will welcome 500 community organizers, healthcare providers, artists and others who are thinking, working and innovating at the intersections of arts and culture, public health and community development. Discussions and panels will focus on how we understand arts participation as a health behavior, and why access to the arts is now seen as one of the social determinants of health.

We’ll also offer a full day of discussions about arts prescribing as a method of enabling more widespread access to the health benefits the arts provide.

Our keynote speakers will include Dr. Marìa Rosario Jackson, the first African American and the first Mexican American woman to serve as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, and cultural strategist, writer, librettist and spoken word artist Marc Bemuthi Joseph, among dozens of presenters.

But most importantly, it will bring innovators working to advance our understanding of how the arts improve our health together in one space, to share ideas and workshop new strategies.

“Every three years, the Creating Healthy Communities convening defines progress in the field of arts in health through highlighting both research and on-the-ground community initiatives. Both must work together to advance the field,” says my friend Margie Pabst Steinmetz, founder of The Pabst Steinmetz Foundation.

(Margie’s foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts are underwriting reduced and zero-cost registration for the convening, to allow as many people working in these fields as possible to attend.)

If you work in the arts, or in any public health role, I invite you to join us for this exciting gathering; early bird pricing for registration continues through July 31.

You’ll meet colleagues from around the country, pick up new ideas and approaches—we’re even building in some time for performances and participation in events at cultural venues around the city, including many organizations that offer activities to our ArtsRx participants, like The Newark Museum of Art and the GlassRoots glass arts studio.

And I promise: The side effects will be wonderful.