Families passing through the vibrant corridors of Boston Children’s Hospital linger to admire bright paintings and colorful displays, a refreshing contrast to the stark white halls and exam rooms typically associated with hospital settings. Despite strict adherence to medical protocol, these spaces are anything but sterile.
The Art Program at Boston Children’s Hospital aims to enhance patients’ physical and emotional well-being through engagement with various art forms and creative activities. It has two basic components: a visual arts program, which manages the hospital’s art collection, curates exhibits and coordinates with community partners; and a creative arts program, which collaborates with Child Life Services to help children express their thoughts and emotions while fostering connections with care providers. Several full-time Art Specialists assist patients with an array of projects, from poetry to video production. This approach reflects a growing recognition that healing requires not only state-of-the-art medical care but also creative expression.
Art Program Manager Elisabeth Gordon said that the hospital’s gallery spaces offer a peaceful respite for all patients and families, providing emotional relief even for those who do not participate in the program directly.
“It’s providing distraction, providing a way to engage with the world in a different way,” Gordon said. “A lot of our kids and our families are in here for a long time. I see parents and kids downstairs walking the halls, engaging with the art.”
Senior Art Specialist Ginny Lewis, who facilitates the Open Art Studio, said that she encourages children to incorporate medical supplies like bandages and syringes into their artwork. Doing so helps them become more familiar with these items and gives them a sense of control over their conditions and surroundings.
“Our goal is to help them to normalize the environment,” Lewis said. “To [make them] feel like they have mastery over the environment—that they have some creative control and agency in this space, and that they are identified as artists and people first, and patients second.”
Senior Art Specialist Laki Vazakas, whose focus is digital storytelling, said that producing art softens a hospital atmosphere that might otherwise feel formal and impersonal.
“Whether it’s writing or filmmaking or music, it’s an opportunity for kids to have fun, for kids to find their own language, to make meaning,” Vazakas said.
Vazakas said that many children in the program use their artwork to inspire and assist future patients.
“We recently had a patient who was here for many months, and we did a series of videos, one of which really focused on reframing his experience so that he could share his hard-earned wisdom with younger kids who might be facing a long hospitalization,” Vazakas said. “It was artistic in the sense that it gave him the ability to express himself, but he also had a purpose in terms of sharing this hard-earned experience.”
Lewis recounted the story of another former Boston Children’s Hospital patient, Grace Markos, who published a book about her battle with cancer. Lewis said that sharing her experience enabled Markos to help others facing similar challenges.
“[Markos] was thinking of a way to make sense of what had happened to her and then also explain it to kids similar to herself, or slightly younger kids, to make it less intimidating,” Lewis said. “We see that a lot, kids wanting to use art to make the experience here better.”
Gordon said that the success of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Art Program and similar initiatives elsewhere has prompted the medical community to reevaluate the connections between art and health.
“We’re starting to understand that to nurture a whole person, it’s not just the clinical treatment of a patient, but it’s the emotional, psychosocial behavior that you have to work with, and the arts can get to that,” Gordon said.
To communicate that emerging understanding with care providers, the Art Specialists conduct training for hospital staff. According to Lewis, these conversations can help patients by disrupting clinical hierarchies and deepening relationships between children and clinicians.
“Using the arts, using narrative, using music, in this different modality—forcing art into someone’s day in this really unique way—can create a different type of dialogue, and it really helps them to slow down, to increase their empathy, to increase their listening capacity. And when they have more bandwidth to take in another story, they can be better practitioners,” Lewis said.
Vazakas conveyed appreciation for the opportunity to make a difference in patients’ lives through the Art Program.
“I’m grateful to be able to work here,” Vazakas said. “I’m grateful to be invited into all these sacred spaces, into all these kids’ rooms, and help them find their language, make choices and build something that helps them to make meaning from these experiences.”
