Friday, May 5th

Reception and Presentation

1. Introduction: Tisch Arts and Health Convergence – Mary Bitel

2. COVID-19 Impact Project – JHT, SJ, Yu-Ying Lee

3. Disability Access and Inclusion in the Arts: Lily Lipman

Saturday, May 6th

Breakout Session Topics:

1. The nuts and bolts of making work at the intersection of arts and health/well-being/care.

2. The emotional costs of making work at the intersection of arts and health/well-being, and issues of self-care while caring with and for others.

Whole Group Synthesis:

1. The role of arts curricula in guiding the next generation of art makers at the intersection of arts and health.

About the Tisch Arts and Health Convergence

This forum is the brainchild of Mary Bitel, co-director of the NYU-wide Arts & Health @ NYU, a consortium of faculty, students, and alums from across the university focused on making work at the intersection of the arts and health/well-being/care. In that role, Mary has been exploring what our Tisch community has to contribute to the conversation and believes that  Tisch is uniquely positioned as an arts institution to contribute through our focus on balancing artistic excellence with creating work that has a positive impact on others’ health and well-being. 

The purpose of this first Tisch Arts and Health Convergence is to bring together an invited group of Tisch faculty, students, and alums to meet, discuss, brainstorm, and establish a central hub for continued development of ideas and projects that live at the intersection of arts and health.

Reflection and  Next Steps (Mary Bitel)

At our first event we began to explore what it means to make work in relation to health, well-being and care. We talked about efforts at self-care while making work that addresses care of and for others, and we engaged in an initial conversation about arts curricula at Tisch that addresses the intersection of art-making and health, well-being and care. So many inspiring messages surfaced in these initial conversations. What struck us in reviewing the notes from the various conversations is how closely related art-making is to community health – first, to the health of our own Tisch community and also to the larger NYC community of which we are all members.

We’re curious about how our work impacts the health of the Tisch community in powerful and positive ways – and what roles our community of artists and arts scholars play in supporting the health of our New York community through that work.

We’d like to continue to explore the relationship between art-making and community health with you – that exploration includes consideration of self-care, logistics of making work, and the role that arts curricula across the arts disciplines plays in addressing individual and community health. Over the next academic year here’s how we plan to do that:

We invite you to join us for structured, small group working sessions, based on your role in the Tisch community (e.g., faculty, administrator, current student, alumnus). We anticipate each working group will meet monthly over the fall semester with one or two meetings towards the end of the semester to bring the various small groups together for a community-wide reflection and planning session: small working groups will come together at the end of the fall semester to share ideas and help plan a second Arts and Health Convergence to be held in late winter 2024; we’re tentatively planning for before spring break in March. (Mary Bitel)

Sponsors

Arts and Health at NYU

Tisch Creative Research