Park Center East Project: Pilot Program for Art Therapy Workshops

After meeting with Diane Roseberry and Barbara Quinn at Park Center, it was decided that art therapy sessions for the community of dual and triple diagnosed individuals (i.e., Substance Abuse, Mental Health, and intellectual disabilities) would be of great benefit to both that particular community in need and for the Nashville artist community in general.

A subsequent meeting with Judge Eisenstein determined that a six session workshop would be scheduled from October through December, 2007 at the Park East Center (948 Woodland Street, Nashville, Tennessee) to include 10 to 12 participants from that center. Workshops are to take place on six different Fridays and are to last approximately two hours each. The budget for this project is set at $1,000 with the participating artist to provide all materials. If the project is considered a success, funding will be provided for future workshops.

All agree that the pilot project should be challenging for all participants and should be goal oriented in that the work the participants do during the session(s) would be featured in the Kennedy Center exhibition program. The workshop will initially draw artists from Nashville's burgeoning independent artist community that has been actively organizing and developing showing opportunities and job skills programs for themselves for the past fifteen years.

The workshops should also be a beginning to better assess the needs of those served by them. As the program grows, prospectively to serve three centers, it should be managed by an art therapist who is also a licensed art counselor. That individual would be responsible for managing the particular artists teaching the workshops and offer continuing, more in depth attention. Workshops should be seen as a beginning to more effective art therapy to better deal with psychological

Contact

Gretchen Herbert, (615) 343-7046