CreatiVets is looking to tackle the challenges that veterans face involving their physical and mental health, wellness, and quality of life. Our programs are uniquely designed to provide therapeutic options for those veterans who resist other treatment approaches or may be unaware of their conditions or issues inhibiting their rehabilitation recovery. CreatiVets hopes to bridge the gap in services with the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). We prioritize the quality of our programs so we can have the highest level of impact on a veteran. Our programs give veterans tools that they can use for coping with stress and anxiety often associated with PTS. Additionally, CreatiVets will be prioritizing community engagement. We hope to eliminate the division between communities and break down barriers and stereotypes. To date, we have been able to accomplish this through art exhibits and other outreach events in local communities.

The immediate and central outcome that CreatiVets seeks is the prevention of suicide. In the long term we want to see veterans continuing to improve their mental state by using the tools they acquire through our programs. We want our programs to offer more than a glimpse of the healing that is possible, we want to jumpstart their journey and then support them as they continue to learn and grow. We want veterans who have taken part in CreatiVets programs to continue using these tools to manage their own symptoms of anxiety and depression, and we also want them to share their success and to be an example for other veterans. Seeing how exponential the healing can be has been a pleasant surprise. Getting veterans through the program has an immediate positive effect on those participants. But afterwards, it’s been amazing to watch how our alumni stay in touch, spread the word, and want to be involved in helping other veterans in their own communities. Veterans who go through the programs experience obvious benefits, but when other veterans see the artwork or hear the songs, it helps them as well. We want to promote and repeat the expected, as well as the unexpected, positive outcomes we’ve seen.

One of our biggest assets are our partnerships with the universities that host our Introduction to Art for Combat Veterans courses. Students have full access to the studios, equipment, and facilities at each institution and complete the program with college credit and alumni status. Our flagship program has been held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) since 2015, and it continues to be a central draw for veterans whose anxiety is outweighed by the excitement of attending a world-class art institution. While we have worked with other schools (Virginia Commonwealth University [VCU] and the University of Southern California [USC]) we continue to have a special relationship with SAIC. Our co-founder and Executive Director, Richard Casper, is from Illinois and when he realized that expressing his own feelings through art was having a positive effect, he applied to SAIC and was accepted. That was the beginning of a relationship that we hope will continue for a long time. The faculty and staff at SAIC have been incredibly supportive, and the fact that they believe in the CreatiVets program and help facilitate whenever they can has had an incredible impact on the success of our programs. That is one reason that four CreatiVets participants, after completing our program, have applied and been accepted to a four-year degree program at SAIC. Beyond the special partnership we have developed with prestigious universities, CreatiVets has a number of important relationships with partners such as Tee It Up for the Troops who have funded CreatiVets for five consecutive years, The Road Home which has referred a number of veterans to CreatiVets programs, and The Tech for Troops Project which has been providing laptop computers to art program participants. Furthermore, we have built relationships throughout the songwriting/music industry. Some of these partnerships include the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame, Vanderbilt University as well as numerous songwriters and producers. By working with these exceptional organizations and individuals, we are able to offer our veterans a once in a lifetime songwriting experience that allows them to tell their own unique story in a creative way. Once the veteran has completed our songwriting program they return home with not just their story in song format, but also with an understanding of the songwriting process and the skills to continue their journey in music.

Programs participants respond to pre and post surveys, where they self-report on their physical and mental wellness, as well as identifying goals for the program. We carefully track and measure their progress and use this data to improve our programs and communicate these results to all our stakeholders. We will also track and measure engagement with the local community at our public outreach events and showcases. We also encourage continued education programs for all of our veteran participants. We assist them with university applications and many end up volunteering to help as a mentor to other veterans that are just beginning their artistic journey. We are constantly impressed with the number of veterans who return to our programs as mentors, eager to share their experience with fellow service members.

CreatiVets is very proud of expanding our current programs, scaling our programs while sustainably serving more veterans, as well as introducing a new range of offerings. This current fiscal year, we will have nearly tripled the number of veterans served through all our programs. In October 2019, we launched a new songwriting program in partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Nashville, Tennessee, which will be held on campus each semester. This program gives us a firm, year-round, permanent footing in the Nashville music and songwriting community, something that we’ve needed to support the explosive growth of our songwriting cohorts hosted at the Grand Ole Opry each quarter. In February of 2020, CreatiVets launched a new program working with the Dallas Museum of Art serving veterans in the Dallas/Ft. Worth and surrounding area. This partnership with the Dallas Museum of Art, along with Bush Institute, Sammons Center for the Arts, and Nasher Sculpture Center, is an extended 6-month program enrolling up to 12 veterans per class that covers collage, photography, and drawing and other media as available. Finally, to create and maintain a presence in the Chicago-area veteran community, CreatiVets opened its first brick-and-mortar facility in Bridgeport during the Fall of 2019. We will be using our space to display CreatiVets graduate work from our programs year round. We will rotate out pieces in the space that are on display as we collect more. Through the Bridgeport Art Center we will be able to participate in 3rd Fridays/Open house every month (https://bridgeportart.com/3rd-fridays/). With our work being displayed we will have constant foot traffic into our space that will provide the potential for future partnerships, as well as increased donations. The art center also has a lot of gallery space throughout the building where we will be able to showcase larger collections of work in the future. The class space will be used to continue programming for our national and local veterans. During the SAIC program, the space will showcase the class’s final exhibition. We will also be using the space in collaboration with our ArtReach program for drawing and collage. The pieces created during this local program will also be exhibited at our Bridgeport space. Serving as a workshop, gallery, and veteran community center, this multi-purpose space allows graduates to stay involved through community classes, continue to use the skills they’ve learned, to act as mentors for other veterans who may be interested in our programs.