Exploring Resilience through the Arts and Culture
2024 was a busy and exciting year for our Collective for Healthy Communities (CHC) team, and we have a lot to celebrate, be grateful for, and anticipate in the coming year!
One of our biggest highlights was our Bounce Back event, a free Red Tent event that served as a community celebration for youth to engage in healing and restorative workshops and activities. Under the umbrella of our reACTion programming, Bounce Back is a project we designed to explore the healing power of creative spaces and ancestral connection. We created the program after being chosen as a finalist in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Children and Youth Resilience Challenge, the first-ever federal prize challenge to fund community-led, culturally-responsive innovations that promote resilience and advance mental health and well-being among children and youth. Embodying our belief in “Art As Medicine,” starting back in November 2023, staff and partnering artists held monthly sessions with youth to harness the healing powers of creativity, the arts, and culture to support their resilience. In March, these activities culminated at the Bounce Back event at the Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts & Cultural Justice, which has a deep significance that relates to the essence of this project as it is located on historic Bayou Road, a path indigenous people used for over 4,000 years, and which today remains a hub for Black-owned businesses. Over 200 youth and adults attended the event, which featured activities such as storytelling and communal drumming workshops, sound baths, a photo booth, origami flower making, beading, and creating “Love Letters to Self.” Attendees also got to meet with partner organizations TransQueerYouth NOLA, Girls Rock New Orleans, GrowDAT Youth Farm, the New Orleans Public Library, and KID smART, to learn more about their free youth programming. Additionally, partners from QT Care House — a collective providing holistic care to the LGBTQ+ community — provided massages, reiki, sound healing, and tarot readings. The event wrapped up with performances from popular local hip-hop group, glbl wrmng, followed by the award-winning Abramson Sci Academy Brass Band.
This past June, we received some amazing news: Bounce Back was selected as one of two Runner Ups in the Children and Youth Resilience Challenge! We are humbled and overjoyed by this recognition of our work and its inherent innovation, and we’re thrilled to receive additional funding to allow us to continue supporting the mental health and resilience of New Orleans youth through the arts, culture, nature, and ancestral connection.
“Bounce Back was a community event that held great personal significance for me because it was an incredible opportunity to uplift and engage New Orleans youth by connecting them with artists, practitioners, and organizations, many of whom I have direct personal and professional connections with.“
– Jemila Dunham, CHC Program Associate
Another major highlight took place in October, when our Program Managers Meagan Dunham and Leticia De los Rios presented posters at the 2024 American Public Health Association (APHA) conference in Minneapolis, MN. This year’s conference theme was “Rebuilding Trust in Public Health and Science,” and to represent that theme and show how we involved community in public health programming, Meagan presented a poster entitled “ReACTion: Building Resilience through Youth Fellowship Programs to Improve Mental Health Outcomes for Black Youth” while Leticia presented a poster entitled "Puentes Para Invitados: Using Narrative Change to Bridge Healing Needs of Migrants and Migrant-Serving Providers in New Mexico to Improve Socio-Emotional Outcomes."
“Experiencing APHA for the first time was a gratifying experience that fueled my excitement for IWES’ commitment to serving youth through community-based programming.”
– Meagan Dunham, CHC Program Manager
Meagan’s poster depicted how IWES aims to incorporate well-honed core elements throughout youth programming and services to build resilience in youth, all while collaborating with them to design, refine, and implement our programming. Meagan also moderated a session examining youth mental health across the lifespan and joined meetings hosted by fellow public health social workers.
“Engaging with fellow APHA attendees deepened my commitment to the work we do at IWES to advance equity in health care, reform oppressive systems, and strengthen support for minoritized communities.”
– Leticia De los Rios, CHC Program Manager
Leticia’s poster highlighted how our Puentes Para Invitados project utilized narrative change to serve as a form of resistance, helping individuals and communities redefine healing on their own terms while challenging harmful societal views. Leticia also moderated a session titled Latinx/e Mental Health for the APHA Latino Caucus, showcasing national efforts focused to break the barriers towards access to mental health and related care for Latinx/e communities. The conference offered Leticia an enriching environment for valuable discussions about public health decolonization, trust-building, and collaboration.
This year, we are particularly grateful for our relationships with our school partners and our ability to pursue work that directly impacts the mental health of local students. Working closely with school administrators from KIPP, CHC social workers piloted a Universal Mental Health Screening (UMHS) program with middle schoolers at KIPP Leadership Academy. Through this collaboration, IWES aims to demonstrate the significant impact of UMHS on improving mental health outcomes and reducing suicidality among Black youth. To enhance these efforts, IWES combined the screenings with school-based skills groups and social-emotional learning sessions with students, which turned out to be very well received. Participants said that they felt happy that their voices were being heard and that they had a safe space to express their feelings. Additionally, IWES conducted training sessions for administrators and teaching artists of Young Audiences of Louisiana. These sessions focused on educator wellness and supporting student resilience by guiding conversations about the impacts of trauma and the healing power of creativity.
In the new year, CHC is excited to dive deeper into incorporating “Art as Medicine” into our school-based work. Neurobiological studies have shown that creativity, curiosity, and play are three of seven emotional needs, and meeting these needs significantly contributes to overall mental well-being. Making art — music, dance, poetry, drama, the visual arts, etc. — has always been a way that humans have flourished. We seek to interweave these healing activities with psycho-educational programming at partnering schools. By building healing-centered and caring relationships between students and artists, young people will feel safe to engage in their worlds with curiosity and develop a desire to build strong social connections both at school and beyond. We envision environments, often seen in traditional practices, where trusted adults guide youth in experiencing the healing power of the arts and nature. This approach aims to help youth, schools, and communities move from merely building resilience to truly flourishing.