UB, University of Florida to present Arts in Healthcare Summer Intensive Training Program

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Center for the Arts at the University at Buffalo and the University of Florida Center for the Arts in Healthcare will hold an Arts in Healthcare Summer Intensive Training program Aug. 10-21.

The program is designed to provide beginning and experienced arts in health-care students and professionals with an opportunity to explore the arts in health care through applied theory and practice. Participants may enroll in either the Advanced Clinical Practice Track or the Introductory Track.

As in any professional practice, inspiration and ongoing learning are essential to longevity and to advancement of the field. The Advanced Clinical Practice Track will provide experienced health-care artists with a rare opportunity for immersive practical and didactic exploration, creative exchange and innovation in clinical practice. Participants will immerse in daily cross-disciplinary clinical practice at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo and in in-depth explorations of practice supported by current research and theory. The program will provide advanced practitioners with a uniquely enriching opportunity for professional development, inspiration and renewal, will deepen and expand individual clinical practice models and will further the field through active and collaborative transdisciplinary collaboration.

Participants in the Introductory Track of the program will explore the applications of visual arts, writing, music, theatre and dance in health-care fields and settings at an introductory level through hands-on studio workshops, clinical observation, review of current literature and discussion-based exploration of clinical practice with advanced practitioners. Participants in the two tracks come together each day for lectures on relevant arts in health-care topics, "journal club" explorations of current literature and for in-depth roundtable discussions of clinical practice based on the current clinical experiences and grounded in theory and current research.

Participating advanced clinical practitioners will have the opportunity to participate following the program in an Advanced Clinical Practice special-interest group established through the Society for the Arts in Healthcare. The group will participate in ongoing communication and collaboration through a listserv and blog that will allow them to continue to work and collaborate to advance and articulate their practices. The forum will also allow program planners at UB to document the value of the intensive program and refine it for greater effectiveness.

The summer intensive workshops will be led by Jill Sonke-Henderson, who is cofounder and director of the Center for the Arts in Healthcare Research and Education (CAHRE) at the University of Florida. A faculty member in the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of Florida, she is assistant director and artist-in-residence since 1994 for Shands Hospital, where she founded the Dance for Life program. Sonke-Henderson is active in research, curriculum and program development at UF, and is a frequent presenter and guest artist at universities, conferences, hospitals and festivals throughout the United States and abroad. She also serves as president of the board of directors for the Society for the Arts in Healthcare.

The cost to register for the Arts in Healthcare Summer Intensive is $850 for full-time professionals, and $765 for full-time students. For more information, contact Katherine Trapanovski at 716-645-0891 or email ktrap@buffalo.edu.

For more information on UB Center for the Arts' Arts in Healthcare program now underway at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo, visit http://www.ubcfa.org.