April 1, 2023
Welcome to AHA! CONNECTS!, a celebration of Arts Health Antigonish’s 10 year anniversary. Here we will be sharing not only stories of the past 10 years but also, the excitement on our horizon in the coming year(s). We are thrilled you’ve come along for the ride!
Introducing AHA!:
How we started; Who we are; What we do
Arts Health Antigonish (AHA!) is a collaboration of artists, health care workers and educators, that began in the sustainability movement in 2013. Three local artists (Fenn Martin, Mary-Beth Carty and Noella Murphy) presented at a sustainability ‘community café’ about how culture supports community resiliency. Through linking culture to the other sustainability pillars (economic, environmental and social), they identified the connection between arts and health. Further exploring of this connection with interested healthcare workers caught the interest of Dr. John Graham-Pole, a retired pediatric oncologist from Florida, considered to be the founder of the arts-health movement about 30 years prior. John became a valuable member of the team, a mentor to us all. Together, we decided that our first step would be to host a symposium, to celebrate what was already happening in our community in arts for health, and to explore whether further action was needed.

The symposium, in April 2013, attracted about 120 people, who contributed wonderful suggestions, ideas and inspiration to the conversation. There was no doubt that there was a hunger for this kind of programming! So we rolled up our sleeves and started visioning: we researched, read, brainstormed and dreamed; we wrote our mission statement, ‘to foster creative expression for community health’, and guiding principles, and we created a logic model, now revised several times.
With the help of Alexander Bridge, we designed a logo, a process in which he incorporated the elements of creativity, community, energy, the arts, ideas, imagination, health, sharing, and celebration. Mary Beth Carty guided us in writing a song to celebrate arts and health; a music video was filmed by Corinne Dunphy, arranged by Donald MacLennan and Benedict Lafford, now on the AHA! Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXiPd-flpj0
Corinne Dunphy also created a short video, narrated by Anne Simpson, to celebrate the connection between creativity and wellness in Antigonish, showcasing not only AHA! programs, but other programs already happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW0mX1Ij8dE
And we began designing programs, inspired by our reading, the knowledge of the team, global best practices, and the availability of financial support. Since 2013, AHA! has created close to 35 arts-based programs, particularly for those in our community with less access to the arts: those in transition, isolated, ill, lonely or vulnerable in other ways, including youth, seniors, immigrants, people in hospital and care facilities. Antigonish is a very creative community, so most healthy adults have ready access to the arts; by working with people at vulnerable times of their lives, AHA! is contributing not only to their personal wellbeing, but also to the overall wellbeing of our community.
What exactly do we do? In collaboration with artists and other community partners, AHA! designs (based on global best practices and local need) and implements programs using arts as a vehicle to reach very intentional health goals for participants, goals such as fostering self-esteem, social connectivity and coping strategies, alleviating loneliness or anxiety, or more physical goals, like improving gait, balance, memory or lung capacity. AHA! brings programs to where participants live and gather: long term care homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, community spaces, and virtually, into people’s homes. AHA! hires artists to facilitate these programs, offering both formal and informal training and workshops in facilitation. As one of our guiding principles, artists are paid fairly for their facilitation, contributing to their own sense of belonging and self-worth and valuing them as integral to community wellbeing.
AHA! has supported and shown the value of music therapy and art in a hospital setting. AHA! has created storytelling projects for youth, seniors and immigrants, brought musicians into the schools for music and songwriting, and facilitated writers and artists working with seniors in care. Aiming to reconnect youth with nature during the pandemic, AHA! created ‘Spellbound by Nature’, an online ‘spell-kit’ (a treasure trove of visual art and poetry), of some Nova Scotia’s natural world. For over four years, AHA! offered a variety of arts for people living with dementia, discovering with them other ways of communicating and other ways to remember. Recognizing the loneliness and isolation of many seniors during the pandemic and the resultant impacts on their health, AHA! created Art Larks!, a virtual arts program for seniors available province-wide in 2021-2023. AHA! has created several videos as promotions, evaluations, or part of programs, available on Youtube.
AHA! has offered ‘playshops’ for the AHA! team and for the Antigonish community, particularly in November, Arts Health Month. In our earlier days, AHA! also created 1784: (Un)settling Antigonish, a community theatre production re-examining our history from a variety of perspectives, and Imagine Antigonish, a visual history of restored photos connecting our history to the social determinants of health.
Although AHA! has primarily created programs to show the value of the arts in wellbeing, we are also committed to arts-health education, research and advocacy. Thanks to mentoring and guidance by Dr. Dorothy Lander, a retired StFX educator, AHA! evaluates programs through arts-based evaluation and appreciative inquiry, and then performs ‘in-depth’ reviews of our projects to determine whether further funding or partnerships might lead to sustainability for the program. AHA! has developed artist-training workshops; AHA! team members have presented at conferences, in classes and for community groups, sharing our knowledge and passion for arts and health. With the guidance and support of Dr. Ann Fox, AHA! has completed two research projects: mapping AHA! program outcomes with the Social Determinants of Health and exploring the outcomes of Arts Canopy, AHA!’s program for seniors living with dementia.
AHA! programs, although primarily in the Antigonish area, have been offered province-wide through virtual programming and artist training. Since 2013, at least 2500 people across the lifespan have engaged with AHA! programs; AHA! has hired more than 60 artists for part time, full time and contractual work; AHA! has engaged at least 50 volunteers, from StFX students to seniors. AHA! has attracted financial support from all three levels of government and both private and public business sectors.
In celebrating our 10 years of arts-health activities, we’d like to share our stories, in the hope of not only inspiring other communities to foster engagement in ‘arts for health’, but also showing decision-makers the transformative value of arts-health programs, for the arts can be a powerful force in healing, learning, and community wellbeing!
DID YOU KNOW?
Arts-Health literature and research has blossomed in the past 3-5 years!
Here are a couple of great recent resources:
https://www.culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk/appg-inquiry/
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329834/9789289054553-eng.pdf
FUN, FUN, FUNDRAISING!
AHA! has had one main fundraising activity in ten years, the creation of two volumes of Colouring Antigonish, a colouring book featuring Antigonish artists: high school students, L’Arche residents, NASCAD students, amateur and professional local artists. A few copies are still available in the community (Posh Peppermint and the Hospital Gift Shop)!
AHA! also held a fundraising event in November, 2015, offering several ‘playshops’ to the community by donation at the door:
We invite you to raise awareness about Parkinson’s