Community Arts to Promote Cohesion and Gratitude in a Boston Based Children’s Hospital

This paper explores the impact of a gratitude based community arts engagement project in an urban children’s hospital. The arts have the power to connect communities and practicing gratitude has protective mental health factors. This project connected these two ideas by implementing a hospital-wide gratitude tree project. Staff, patients, families, and visitors were engaged in adding their gratitude to the communal trees over a period of two months. The results of this investigation display the connecting power of the arts and explores the impact of environment in regard to an art enhanced hospital setting. The results of the study revealed three main themes: gratitude, aesthetic, and exposure to expressive arts therapy. The author relates the results to the needs of enhanced expressive therapies services in hospitals