My Nonprofit Reviews

Arts and Minds is an extraordinary nonprofit that seems to bring magic to everyone it touches - from participants to facilitators and even to visiting Medical Humanities students.

In 2021, Arts and Minds participants (both individuals with dementia and their caregivers) showed exceptional generosity in allowing my Columbia University students to attend and participate in their daily arts education programs (held virtually during the pandemic). Thanks to the enthusiasm of Executive Director Carolyn Halpin-Healy, Arts and Minds partnered with our Medical Humanities course, "Contradictions of Care," to afford students a community placement where they could observe a warm and dynamic caregiving relationship. Over six weeks, the arts instructors/facilitators warmly welcomed our students to their arts-based virtual discussions, and the program participants generously allowed them to observe their caregiving dynamics while doing the enjoyable work of creative interpretation.

These placements were without question the highlight of the course. The students were hugely grateful not just to observe the inspirational activities of the caregiving pairs, but also to participate themselves in arts education in a therapeutic context. Many of them will go on to medical careers, and this was a formative experience for them in witnessing the lifelong benefit of arts education as well as the realities of life for caregivers living with someone with a neurological condition. Their brilliant essays that reflected on the placement were a joy to read, putting their 'witnessing' in conversation with the bioethics works we had read in the course.

Working with Arts and Minds was an unsurpassed academic and social experience that will stay with them in the future: my hope is that the Columbia students who participated will be motivated in the future to explore related medical fields like neurology and palliative care, and humanities areas such as aging studies. Beyond the incredible work that Arts and Minds does for the participants -- both those who are cared for as well as the caregivers -- the organization has also had a substantial impact on the wider community, and, we hope, on the careers of future health providers.