Our Insights

The Creative Forces Community Engagement Grants aim to make a difference in military connected communities, through support of arts engagement activities designed to cultivate creative expression, increase social connectedness, improve resilience, and support successful adaptation to civilian life. The inaugural grantees are engaging their local and regional communities in art-making experiences that include a variety of artistic disciplines.

Partnership, Collaboration, and Outreach – taken together, these elements form critical infrastructure for community-based projects serving military-connected populations. This blog explores relationships and collaboration, both within community projects and with clinical partners, as keys to effective programs.

Recently the National Endowment for the Arts launched the new Creative Forces Community Engagement Grants. The NEA developed this grant opportunity in partnership with Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA), and M-AAA also manages the grant program. Christine Bial, M-AAA’s director of arts & humanities grant programs, spoke to us about this funding opportunity and what areas potential applicants should consider as they put together a proposal.

Creative Forces®: Healing the Invisible Wounds of War is an interactive exhibition of 45 pieces of visual art, music, and performances by military service members and veterans who are current or former participants in the Creative Forces®: NEA Military Healing Arts Network. The exhibition also includes first-person accounts from the artists about their experiences with creative arts therapies and effects of these treatments on their lives.

In March, the Creative Forces clinical team was busy hosting events and outreach efforts to communicate the value and efficacy of creative arts therapies in alignment with other national efforts—the annual March observance of Brain Injury Awareness Month, led by the Brain Injury Association of America, and Creative Arts Therapies Week during the third week in March, as designated by the National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapies Association.

Section 3 of Advances in Creative Forces® Clinical Research and Applications of the Creative Arts Therapies for Treating PTSD and TBI in Military-Connected Populations by Dr. Donna Betts. Image courtesy of National Endowment for the Arts.

Section 5 of Advances in Creative Forces® Clinical Research and Applications of the Creative Arts Therapies for Treating PTSD and TBI in Military-Connected Populations by Dr. Donna Betts.  Photo of marbled music created at the Creative Arts Therapists All-Hands (2019) courtesy of Donna Betts.

Section 1 of Advances in Creative Forces® Clinical Research and Applications of the Creative Arts Therapies for Treating PTSD and TBI in Military-Connected Populations by Donna Betts

Image: Framework of representations of self as seen in mask imagery courtesy of Walker, Kaimal, et.al. 2017.

Section 2 of Advances in Creative Forces® Clinical Research and Applications of the Creative Arts Therapies for Treating PTSD and TBI in Military-Connected Populations by Dr. Donna Betts.  Image of Creative Forces Dance Movement Conceptual Framework brainstorming (2019) courtesy of Donna Betts.

Section 4 of Advances in Creative Forces® Clinical Research and Applications of the Creative Arts Therapies for Treating PTSD and TBI in Military-Connected Populations by Dr. Donna Betts. Photo of creative arts therapists, researchers and community arts providers experiencing a ukelele workshop at George Mason University courtesy of Donna Betts.