Dare to Hope
Not sure about y’all, but does it make sense to feel like this year flew by, but that it also felt like four years crammed into one? As we reflect on a busy 2025 filled with achievements, immediately a few special moments our Collective for Healthy Communities (CHC) team experienced come to mind, along with a powerful overarching lesson and continued work to be hopeful about in the New Year.
Our greatest achievement this year was fueled by collaborative ideas from youth and some very accomplished artists in the New Orleans area. Last year we spoke about how we developed an award-winning Arts as Medicine program for youth, and this year we built on that foundation and developed and piloted a new arts-based curriculum designed to reduce suicidality and improve mental health outcomes, infusing the guidance from artists and youth throughout the process. Our goal is to harness the power of the arts and creativity to engage young people in non-stigmatizing conversations around their mental health and well-being. The curriculum integrates neuroscience, psychoeducational content, and immersive, culturally driven, healing arts experiences into a workshop series for youth. This approach allowed them to explore their strengths, better understand their emotions, and express their fears and desires through mediums that are very natural to them — such as songwriting, dance/movement, and poetry — and develop skills to manage their mental health with active community support.
None of these achievements would have been possible without the support and openness of Abramson Sci Academy, and especially Johnnie Van Buren and their award winning Marching Band unit, whose members participated in the pilot. It also would not have been possible without the contributions of each member of our talented and very interdisciplinary CHC team. Composed of educators, mental health clinicians, and artists, this exceptional group of professionals provides daily reinforcement of a lesson that some folks tend to forget — diversity is key to innovation. Through our diverse skills and abilities, we’ve created a collaborative environment that fosters deep listening, creative problem-solving, and meaningful collaboration to explore ideas, interventions, and solutions.
Want a glimpse of our pilot? Check out this reel for highlights from all four days!
In 2026, CHC will strive to build on the successes of 2025 and continue developing and expanding our work to create a movement that immerses youth in arts-based practices. We will work to create spaces and opportunities for youth to recognize their capacity to address the anxiety and stress they feel, especially when caused by existential threats which lead them to question their existence. This type of programming creates the space to enable them to dream beyond survival, to thrive, and to envision a future of collective healing and liberation.
We invite each person reading this to also reflect on your year of achievements and lessons learned, and we challenge us all (ourselves included) to identify the many ways our personal choices and actions have made a direct impact on the lives of individuals in our home, workplace, neighborhood, and broader community – big and small.
As you reflect, remember that each person’s unique life experiences, cultural perspectives, and abilities are essential to creating a future where everyone has the resources to define and envision what healing looks like for them. We encourage you to close out your year by creating space to celebrate your wins, mourn your losses, and dare to hope for a brighter, more equitable tomorrow.
To all our community members, partners, and funders, thank you for your continued support. After a period of rest, we look forward to reconnecting and sharing more about what we’ve been dreaming up for 2026.