Inside United Arts Collier’s Arts & Health initiative, where registered art therapists and teaching artists are reaching children, older adults, and Veterans from Naples to Immokalee to Everglades City.
Try to describe the hardest thing that ever happened to you. Now do it out loud, to a stranger, at age twelve.
For a lot of young people, that’s not a therapeutic breakthrough waiting to happen. It’s a wall. So United Arts Collier hands them something else: paper, clay, paint, movement, and a trained professional sitting beside them.
One teen in the program at Youth Haven put it plainly. The sessions, she said, “help me communicate my feelings better and express myself better to people around me.”
That sentence is the whole idea behind UAC’s Arts & Health initiative.
What is “Arts & Health,” exactly?
It’s easy to hear “art program” and picture a craft table. This is something different, and the distinction matters.
UAC’s Arts & Health work runs on two tracks. The first is clinical art therapy, delivered by a credentialed, registered art therapist. This is licensed mental health work that happens to use visual art as its language rather than conversation alone. The second is non-clinical therapeutic arts, led by trained teaching artists. These sessions aren’t treatment, and they aren’t presented as such. They build the skills that make people more resilient: naming an emotion, sitting with a difficult feeling, finishing something hard, being seen by a group. Both of these tracks are offered free to youth participants, made possible through collaborative funding efforts with our partner organizations. Both happen where people already are, rather than asking families to find transportation to a clinic or studio location.
The evidence behind it
The idea that making art supports health is no longer a hunch. In 2019, the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe published the most comprehensive evidence review of arts and health to date, mapping more than 900 publications, including over 200 reviews covering more than 3,000 studies. Its conclusion: the arts play a meaningful role in preventing illness, promoting health, and managing and treating conditions across the entire lifespan.
For children specifically, a 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis of 40 studies involving 2,534 children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events found that creative arts-based interventions reduced trauma symptoms. A 2020 review of 16 randomized controlled trials with 636 participants found that dance improved balance and motor symptom severity for people living with mild to moderate Parkinson’s disease, which is why dance shows up in this work alongside painting and drawing.
The need is not abstract. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 39.7% of U.S. high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and that roughly 28.5% reported poor mental health. Collier County’s young people are not exempt from that, and Collier County does not have enough clinicians to meet it.
What this looks like on the ground
UAC currently delivers Arts & Health programming in partnership with the David Lawrence Center, Youth Haven, Collier County Public Library, and other local organizations, reaching participants in Naples, Immokalee, Golden Gate, and Everglades City.
At the David Lawrence Center, UAC provides non-clinical therapeutic art sessions to children and teens through two programs, one offered monthly for teen participants and one offered bi-weekly for younger youth.
At Youth Haven, which serves abused and neglected children and teens across Southwest Florida, a registered art therapist leads bi-weekly clinical art therapy sessions. Participants work through exercises designed to help them regulate emotions, recognize coping strategies, and express what they’re carrying. UAC’s partnership with Youth Haven spans several years, and the addition of art therapy has become one of the pillars of the initiative.
Who makes sure it’s any good
Programs like this succeed or fail on rigor, so UAC built oversight in from the start. The UAC Arts & Health Council is an assembly of research, academic, and clinical leaders working at the intersection of arts and health. The Council meets biannually to examine program curriculum, evaluation tools, and impact analysis, keeping the work aligned with field best practices.
What’s coming next
Expansions are underway. A collaboration with NCH (Naples Comprehensive Health) just launched placing art “Creation Stations” in pediatric hospital waiting rooms, turning some of the most anxious hours a family spends into something they can do together. UAC is also working to launch art therapy programming for Veterans and expand offerings for older adults including ongoing Dance for Parkinson’s Disease workshops. Requests from partner organizations across the county continue to grow as does the demand for funding.
With gratitude to those making it possible
UAC extends its sincere thanks to the Naples Children Foundation and the Suncoast Credit Union Foundation, whose support has been instrumental in building and sustaining Arts & Health programming for Collier County’s children. Their investment is what makes it possible for UAC’s trained professionals to sit down with participants week after week, making a positive difference for the children in Collier through the power of the arts.
About United Arts Collier
As Collier County’s official Local Arts Agency, United Arts Collier works to bring the very real benefits of the arts to our community’s health, education, economy, and quality of life.
Founded in 1980, UAC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving as the arts umbrella for the county. Alongside Arts & Health, UAC delivers arts education to more than 1,500 students each year across 26 sites, produces UAC’s Naples International Dance Festival, records community history through the Collier Arts Archive, and presents exhibitions and special events with a total of over 40 community partners. Learn more at unitedartscollier.org.
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