Through one-on-one arts education, Snow City Arts supports hospitalized children and youth, nurturing creativity, curiosity, and confidence when it matters most.
Through one-on-one arts education, Snow City Arts supports hospitalized children and youth, nurturing creativity, curiosity, and confidence when it matters most.
A practical primer for arts organizations looking to partner with hospitals and deliver high-quality arts programming, drawing on decades of experience from Snow City Arts.
In 1998, on a snowy Chicago morning, poet Paul Sznewajs walked into Rush University Medical Center with an idea that would change how young patients experience the hospital: What if children could receive high-quality arts education right at their bedside?
Paul knew the power of the arts in a child’s development. According to The College Board, a child who studies the arts is four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement than ones who don’t. Those who take four years of arts classes in high school score, on average, 92 points higher on the SAT than peers who take one half-year or less.
But, annually, more than 100,000 Illinois children miss school due to hospitalization or ongoing medical needs. Many receive no educational engagement during that time. Paul saw the gap and imagined a way to fill it: with creativity.
4x
How much more likely children who study the arts are to be recognized for academic achievement.
+92
How many points a full arts curriculum in high school adds to an average SAT score.
100k+
How many Illinois children miss school each year due to hospitalization or ongoing medical needs.
This simple idea became Snow City Arts, a program that now operates in multiple hospitals and disciplines, bringing meaningful arts experiences to children and teens in medical care.
Along the way, the Snow City Arts team has learned what it really takes to collaborate successfully with hospitals: patience, persistence, and a lot of paperwork.
Here’s some of our top tips for how to get in the door, build trust, and design arts programs that make the hospital a place where creativity can thrive.
Real-World Example: Art Galleries in Hospital Hallways
At many of our hospital sites, Snow City Arts has installed galleries of student artwork. These gallery spaces give our programming visibility to our partners and allow students to see their work displayed proudly in the hallways of their hospital.
The exhibition of student artwork can be an important part of arts learning, giving them a sense of achievement and an opportunity to reflect on their journey as an artist.
Interfacing with an institution like a hospital requires an enormous amount of legal prep work. Whether or not any money ever changes hands, you’ll need a signed contract and a business associates agreement. Existing inside a hospital requires multiple types of insurance and cooperation from the legal, compliance, human resources, volunteer, and marketing teams of the host hospital.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Snow City Arts
These documents, along with an agreement on intellectual property rights, can take a long time to get finalized and the process can involve months of back and forth. Having someone on your team that speaks the language will speed up the pace. Most of all, it takes persistence and patience. But the work pays off! Once these systems are in place, they should serve you well for many years.
After you’re in the door with a signed contract, it’s likely you’ll begin interacting with privileged information, and protected health information (PHI). Any documenting of artwork or information about the people you work with will require a system of storing and handling that information that is HIPAA compliant. This means you’ll need to invest time and money in the maintenance of that system. You’ll need a tech security contractor along with systems and processes that ensure the safety of the information you are handling.
If, like Snow City Arts, you plan to document artwork, capture student images or voices, or communicate with the schools of young people, those actions may each require separate legal releases that will need to be reviewed and approved by your host hospital.
Hospitals are complex systems, so be prepared for long waits in the contracting process and identify advocates within the hospital that you can reach out to for help if the process gets hung up. The wait can be long, but it’s worth the effort.
It is important to keep your patients at the center of all conversations. Let them be a guiding light and source of motivation. Your goal is to design your programming in a way that protects and celebrates your participants.
Real-Life Example: Using Assistive Tools to Make Workshops Accessible
Arts programming in hospitals often requires adapting materials and approaches to meet a wide range of physical, cognitive, and sensory needs. Patients may be recovering from surgery, managing limited mobility, navigating sensory sensitivities, or experiencing fatigue.
This teaching artist utilizes training in assistive tools to make arts workshops more accessible. Notice the green band that can make grasping a paint brush easier.
The blue tray is a sensory/activity table that provides clear step-by-step instructions to support students on the autism spectrum.
Maintaining a staff that works in the hospital demands a combination of requirements, and related budget allocations, to remain in compliance with your host hospital. This can mean:
Annual background checks
Sexual offender registry checks
Regular training in HIPAA, cyber security, hospital policy, mandated reporter training,
A slate of medical requirements including MMR, Varicella, Hep B, drug testing, annual flu shots and TB screenings.
Sometimes these can be done inside of the hospital, but not always.
Furthermore, working in a hospital requires a lot of training. This training is less a “mountain to climb” and more an “ocean to swim in”. The process is ongoing. Staff will require initial training with a prolonged shadowing process followed by ongoing trainings in wayfinding, material safety, contact precautions, and annual trainings on things like hospital policy, fire safety, bloodborne pathogens and sexual harassment.
You and your organization will likely be considered a vendor/contractor, though relationships with hospitals and the understanding that goes along with that can vary widely.
We’ve found that it’s helpful to schedule monthly one-on-one meetings with individual hospitals and stakeholders. With so much to learn, it’s easy for new staff to become overwhelmed, and we’ve found it helpful to remember that learning happens in layers, just like painting a house.
Facilitating creativity in a hospital environment isn’t for everyone. Beyond the emotional toll, the work is often defined by constraints. But those that are motivated to meet the challenge of this environment will quickly see that there is immense need for it and the work is inherently rewarding.
Hospitals are places of transformation, and people spend much of their time there waiting. There is tremendous potential for meaningful engagement and growth.
Real-World Example: Arts Wellness Breaks for Nurses
Nurses experience high levels of stress and burnout, and many spend long shifts caring for others without time to care for themselves
Snow City Arts’ Art Break program was designed to provide arts wellness opportunities for nurses to combat burnout in the hospital.
Teaching Artists lead hour-long, hands-on workshops rooted in visual art, creative writing, and music—inviting nurses to slow down, explore self-expression, and build community with one another.
Programs like this meet a need in the hospital, while making the work Snow City Arts does more visible to our hospital partners.
Communication with your hospital partners is of the greatest possible importance. Before your work even begins, it’s important to answer some key questions:
Who should you be sharing challenges and successes with, and who should you go to if you have a problem?
Will you be data sharing with the hospital and if so, what data and how often?
What does the hospital community need help with?
As you establish a relationship with your hospital host, be sure to clearly define expectations on both sides of the relationship. There can be many types of art specialists in a hospital with vastly different skill sets and training. Maintaining a clear understanding of what your role is (and is not) will serve you well in a hospital.
The upkeep of hospital relationships relies on clear and frequent communication, a clear report structure, maintaining expectations, and weaving yourself into regular hospital processes and activities. We’ve had great success being involved in the new staff onboarding process for hospital employees that we regularly collaborate with to make sure we’re all on the same page.
The goal is to build an effective system for communicating and prioritizing a daily list of eligible participants. Snow City Arts has used different systems for receiving referrals in every hospital where we’ve worked, so it should be tailored to your environment, and you can expect that it will evolve. Define your closest contacts and speak with them often.
Real-World Example: Professional Learning for Therapy Teams
Hospitals often bring together many different kinds of creative specialists—teaching artists, art therapists, music therapists—each with their own training, tools, and goals.
Providing Professional Learning opportunities for members of the art and music therapy teams strengthened our relationship to other art makers in the hospital and provided insight into what and how Snow City Arts teaches.
This picture is of a set design workshop. Shared experiences build understanding, reinforce relationships, and help communication.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Snow City Arts
Tip #4: Invest in Community
As your work develops, model flexibility, collaboration, and support. You won’t be operating inside of a vacuum. Identifying what you can offer to meet your hosts’ challenges will demonstrate your value to their community.
We hold regular mixers with our hospital partners to build relationships beyond the day to day.
We’ve also hosted Professional Learning events for hospital staff to make art with our teaching artists. It gives them space and time to express and play, and it informs them of what we’re teaching and what our teaching style is.
We’ve hosted art-making wellness events where nurses can take a break from their day to make art
We’ve engaged in hospital beautification opportunities, seeking funding for curations of student artwork in public hospital spaces for visibility and community benefit.
Attending every hospital-based event is impossible but proactively seeking out opportunities to meet hospital staff in different departments and across the hierarchy is important. One day you might meet a potential board member, the next day it could be someone in capital projects who can identify workspace for you (always at a premium), or a person in environmental services who can locate loads of cardboard for a project.
Healthy relationships are the most important element of a sustainable hospital partnership. You literally cannot do it alone and the more people rooting for you to succeed, the easier it will be to flourish.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Snow City Arts
Conclusion
We’ve found that the hospital is full of devoted and like-minded individuals who feel passionately about bringing the arts into the hospital, and who will move mountains to make things happen.
It’s a space that favors solution-minded optimists, so if you’re serious about trying to integrate your arts organization into a hospital system, start by identifying that motivated partner, schedule a meeting, take them out to lunch, and start the long and worthwhile journey of artmaking in the hospital!
