FAQs

Purpose of the HeART of Healing project

Build a strong community within Portland, Oregon’s infrastructure
Connect people to heARTists to nonprofits to community outreach organizations to legislative entities
Create a viable communication system between populace and policymakers
Redefine health care to include heARTistic expression and local community-based efforts
Answer the question: “How is ART part of the health care movement?”

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What does the HeART of Healing build upon?

Founded by former two-term Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, M.D., The Archimedes Movement is paving the way to health care reform, starting with Oregon. Already the organization is making serious waves for Oregon to change legislation and to work with insurance companies and health providers in order to ensure that every person gets access to basic health care – regardless of condition, age, employment status or income. To promote its powerful work and to build awareness, Archimedes has launched its 2010 fundraising lecture and event series and April’s theme is called the HeART of Healing.

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What is the HeART of Healing Project about?

The HeART of Healing project is a very exciting month-long celebration coming up this April, 2010. We’re planning live poetry readings at Trimet bus stops; a 112-member strong, Patch Adam’s inspired clown appearance in downtown Portland; art fundraisers; avant-garde minglers portraying friendly guerilla art; a week of movement therapy demonstrations; Wordstock-Wordstock-Wordstock, a four-day film series; and musical concerts by nationally known bands. We’re working with local nonprofits, arts organizations, and health-related colleges to co-produce some of these events. The net benefit we envision will be a huge boost in awareness for all partners involved… plus strides in awareness around the urgency of health care reform, especially detailing how the structure of health care affects heARTists and creative professionals.

We like to describe the HeART of Healing project as an ingenious way to advertise to the community at large; in other words, what health care transformation truly means: (e)quality for everyone. Organizations and people who participate will act to resculpt, reframe, and revitalize the health care system.

The premise of the HeART of Healing’s month-long engagement is to create a forum in which we will bring key members of the health and art community together to discuss how art and medicine are connected, and, more importantly, how we can incorporate these functionally innovative approaches for the next phases of health care development.

Simply put, the HeART of Healing project is designed as an informative, working model for the future of how art can help medicine. The HeART of Healing project has the potential to reshape health policy in Oregon so that the artistic community becomes an active element in discussions surrounding subsequent health-oriented infrastructures.

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Am I a heARTist?

A heARTist is anyone who leads (com)passionately with his/her heart. Someone who seeks alternatives to the status quo because they simply know there’s just gotta be a better solution out there… somewhere… beneath the deep blue sky… and there ain’t no one or nobody that can stop them.

Just like Charlie, heARTists break through the glass elevator’s ceiling to capture those pie-in-the-sky ideas and form creative, sustainable solutions based upon genuine values. Think: simplicity, quality, respect, and trust.

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What are the benefits for the Portland community?

The main goals for the HeART of Healing project is to raise awareness about the Archimedes Movement‘s efforts to create positive health reform for all, beginning with Oregon, and more specifically here with grassrooted communities. The creation of this heARTful event would be valuable to both heARTists and health reform organizations, such as the Archimedes Movement, because of the following reasons:

HeARTists tend to be outliers in our current medical models, left without a means to cover medical costs (think: insurance) and left with inadequate methods to truly treat an underlying dis-ease such as conditions like diabetes and depression.
Moreover, the artistic community is often left out of the health care discussion, and yet, ironically, the healing arts community serves a dynamic and supportive outlet for struggling artists and the underserved.
Art goes beyond aesthetic perspectives and can act to nurture underlying principles such as self-awareness, thoughtfulness, and healthy expression, which are oftentimes missing from the conventional clinical setting.
The healing arts community can relate to audiences of diverse age groups, cultures, and personal backgrounds and can serve as a revitalizing mechanism for our ailing medical models.
The HeART of Healing will enable an essential exchange about how art directly affects health. By that same token, this conversation offers a significant step forward for the Portland community, who strives to work together, to empower and instigate real change within our antiquated medical models. Following in steps similar to B.B. King’s 1968 Cook County Jail record, the HeART of Healing project seeks to bridge the world of art and medicine, literally unifying through collaborations within the healing arts communities, medicine, and policy makers.

Furthermore, the HeART of Healing will offer substantial tools for organizations and independent heARTists to establish a louder voice in the political spectrum for health care transformation. The HeART of Healing truly offers direct reward for heARTists because, as natural, creative entities, each can offer the much-needed spin doctoring to direct health care efforts towards a more positive paradigm.

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Who is likely to attend or get involved?

Targeted audiences for the HeART of Healing event are primarily innocent bystanders and heARTists in the Portland metro area, ranging from academic to professional, musical to media-based, and every other variation thereof in between. However, considering the explicit context involved, and who would possess a greater interest to attend, the audience would shift towards the following individuals and/or organizations:

Those that seek to make greater strides to secure health services for our populace
Those that seek to bridge art and medicine in a working health care model
Those that wish to participant in the health care transformation
Those that have a passion for the intrinsic intersection of art, creativity, and the healing process

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I can’t wait, get me involved in the health care debate… NOW! ….Where do I go?

No problem-o. The resources below will put you in direct contact with your regional and national elected officials, as well as connect you to health care advocates:

Direct communication channels can offer you insight, efficiency, and leverage for your personal concerns. Democracy is for the people, by the people, be an author in your own neck of the woods. And remember: “If you will it, dude, there is no dream.”

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How can I get involved with the HeART of Healing Project?

Awesome. Great question! Check out our Join the Fun page to learn about all the lovely possibilities. Think out-side-the-box or just think about health care differently, getting involved can be as you like it.

In the event that you would like to sign you or your organization up to be a pART of the HeART of Healing project, you can; in fact, the more the merrier. You can also follow a “who, what, when, and where” approach to the HeART of Healing events on these respective pages, moreover if you decide to become involved on a more prominent level, your information would also be displayed in these locations, too!

Who / What = Organizations Involved

When / Where = Calendar of Events

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What’s the marketing and community outreach plan for the HeART of Healing?

The Archimedes Movement is a grassroots nonprofit comprised of many passionate volunteers with powerful connections and ample sources of energy and vision. Through these connections, we plan to gather hundreds of heARTists, musicians, poets, writers, innovators, healers, and creative doers to help us raise awareness for health reform and the healing power of community. Thanks to these community connections, i.e. the old-school ‘word of mouth’ approach, we will create momentum* for the healing arts by creatively engaging the city of Portland. However, there are a few other approaches (which are more routinely applied) that the HeART of Healing project will also deploy.

The Internet will be our primary outlet, where we will provide updates on project status through RSS feeds, twitter, and webpage connections. The sites will not be limited to our official HeART of Healing homepage, but rather Facebook, Craigslist, and other online artistic social media sources will also be utilized. We will also engage social media to build hype and to send out invitations.

* Please note that these items are only a limited marketing approach for the HeART of Healing project and that momentum is also a key feature to our approach. All outreach efforts and events will act to build upon one another, directing audience members back to the HeART of Healing website to learn more about participating organizations and heARTists, and through incremental measures the HeART of Healing will end in a crescendo fashion. How will the audience know to go to the website? All events will display the HeART of Healing logo (think T-shirts, buttons, A-frames, and handheld leaflets) which will create a cohesive message for the April events and indicate directions to the website. Moreover, the logo will become commonplace… instilled in the public’s perception and ultimately linked with this heARTful cause and the Archimedes Movement.

To provide the reader with context, the more benign guerilla art work will initially be peppered throughout the streets of Portland such as poetry at Trimet bus stops and sidewalk chalk drawings outside of grocery stores. As the month progresses with our more formally publicized scheduled events, such as open forum panel discussion, we will attract more audience members. Then through the use of bubbly clowns, flaming flamenco dancers, big-band hoopla, etcetera, etcetera, well, the 30th of April, 2010. promises to be good in Portland, Oregon.

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How will the HeART of Healing Project measure goals and success?

Our goals are to literally shift Portland into a new medical paradigm through the use of heARTistic expression. At present, the introduction of a little spice and pizzazz into medicine just might be what the doctor ordered, especially considering how quickly the HeART of Healing project is coming together in the context to slower moving health reform efforts. We expect that the HeART of Healing event in its entirety, explicitly through the conjoined efforts of artistic community members, will far exceed any goals we may outline below.

We are discovering that the power behind such an Archimedes’ movement, an innovative way to bring people together over a common goal, particularly one backed by prominent heARTists in the Portland community, will go beyond one evening or a month-long celebration. However, knowing that we exist in a world of validating measures, the following will be employed to track progress and success through all stages of the HeART of Healing project.

Quantitative measures produced for the HeART of Healing project will be obtained primarily through the Internet and can easily be described in graph, chart, or statistical formats. Specifically we will monitor for:

The number of non-profit organizations and heARTists that attend and participate in the HeART of Healing events.
Blog stats (i.e., Hits, Files, Page visits, referrals) for the HeART of Healing website will be monitored for daily and monthly averages. For each event, we can monitor how often people search and look at this section on the website.

Qualitative measures will be employed at the time of each demonstration. Upon completion of a presentation, each audience member has an option to fill out a simple one-page questionnaire, which will allow organizers to obtain direct feedback about the event. This questionnaire will also be offered online at this HeART of Healing website if hardcopies are unavailable or if an audience member just happened to stop by. This questionnaire format will be the same for every event so that we can calculate specific measures for each entity as well as an overall calculation for the HeART of Healing project. This qualitative format will provide ‘evidence-based’ medicine for those that would like to fund or support future like-minded projects, yet will also contain the individual input from our audience members.

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Will the HeART of Healing Project be documented?

Documentation is pART of the HeART of Healing event. We do have a few documentarians that have submitted proposals for the month-long April celebration, yet at this time, we do not know the extent of what will be filmed, photographed, or recorded. We would be happy to provide our collaborators with a copy of our collected media materials. In the event that documentation does not occur, we would certainly permit you to create your own community outreach and marketing materials from our HeART of Healing project.

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Will I get paid if I pARTicipate in the HeART of Healing project?

Dedicated volunteers put on the HeART of Healing event. No one will be paid directly for performances; this includes musicians, artists, medical practitioners, behind-the-scenes gnomes, etc., it is a total volunteer-based project that seeks to change our approach to health care, so need to worry about an imbalance in compensation. All performers can reap the reward of pARTicipating in a truly benevolent mission on equal footing (those performing on unicycles can also expect the same). However, each entity is encouraged to promote their own heARTwork, and with that said, if you choose to support your efforts through monetary gain, that is entirely up to you. If you choose to direct a portion of your proceeds to the Archimedes Movement’s efforts for health reform, you can do so here.

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How will audience members know that I am pART of the HeART of Healing project?

All we ask is that your performers carry an identifying piece for the HeART of Healing, the most explicit way would be a business card with the HeART of Healing website information, you or your organization could also advertise on the backside or using your own forms of advertisement (Note that the HeART of Healing logo, T-shirt, stickers, buttons, etcetera are on the way). All entertainers are encouraged to create costumes that exemplify the HeART of Healing message, but again, we feel comfortable relying upon the innate abilities to dress up as you see fit.

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