National Endowment for the Arts Announces Arts, Health, and Well-being Demonstration Projects
 

Washington, DC—The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced today funding for nine projects that demonstrate promising local arts and cultural approaches for addressing social connection, belonging, and mental health through the arts. Each organization will receive a non-matching grant of $150,000 for their project, totaling $1.35 million in allocated funding, and will participate in opportunities to share best practices and learn from other organizations doing similar work.

“Belonging and social connection are increasingly understood as vital to the health and well-being of both individuals and communities,” said Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. “I am excited for this opportunity to broaden our understanding of the many different ways arts participation can contribute to advancing this work, while also displaying the power of cross-sector partnerships.” 

In 2023, the Surgeon General released an advisory warning about the adverse health effects of loneliness and social isolation. Recently-released NEA research showed that Americans who participated in the arts were more likely than non-arts participants to engage in activities that build community and social connections—and they were often less likely to report feeling lonely in general. 
These grants are part of the NEA’s Arts, Health, and Well-being Pilot Initiative that was announced by Chair Jackson at Healing, Bridging, Thriving: A Summit on Arts and Culture in our Communities, an event co-hosted by the White House Domestic Policy Council and National Endowment for the Arts earlier this year.

Each demonstration project addresses the health and well-being of individuals and communities:

• In Indiana, the Indy Arts Council (Arts Council of Indianapolis) will expand their program Arts For Awareness, which supports local arts organizations in developing and implementing arts-based substance use disorder (SUD) prevention, education, and recovery programs in Marion County, Indiana.
• In Louisiana, the Ashé Cultural Arts Center will continue its I Deserve It! program, which hires and trains local artists and culture bearers to serve as community health workers.
• In Puerto Rico, the Flamboyan Foundation will hold a series of artist-led participatory design workshops in the rural town of Lajas, Puerto Rico, with the goal of creating artist-designed resilient infrastructure that reflects local culture and creativity. 
• In Ohio, Harmony Project Productions will hold a series of rehearsals, public performances, and community service activities by a new statewide chorus network designed to strengthen social connection and belonging. 
• In Connecticut, Long Wharf Theatre will host a series of multidisciplinary performance events and post-show conversations designed to facilitate social connection and deepen a sense of communal belonging through theater.   
• The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition will host a series of artist-led virtual workshops that foster healing and respond to the collective trauma experienced by those affected by the federal Indian boarding school system. 
• In Oregon, Open Signal will work with community youth to create a series of media production workshops focused on mental health issues for youth.
• In Minnesota, Springboard for the Arts will hold artist-led projects focused on improving social connectedness and mental health in rural Otter Tail County and the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
• In New York, Urban Health Plan will continue the next phase of Arts for Everybody, an arts-based social prescribing and arts engagement program at three community health centers in the South Bronx, and will also contribute to a national gathering of communities leading arts and health work through the One Nation One Project initiative.

Read the full project descriptions for more details, including key program partners. As with other NEA grants, these applications were reviewed by an advisory panel and their recommendations were forwarded to the National Council on the Arts, who forwarded their recommendations to the NEA Chair. The NEA Chair makes the final decision on all grant awards.

In addition to these nine demonstration projects, the state and jurisdictional arts agencies (SAAs) also had the opportunity to apply for funding as part of their FY25 Partnership Agreements to advance, deepen, and/or expand work at the state level in driving belonging and social connection, or to initiate new exploratory work or a demonstration project. Under both grant programs, the NEA plans to document various grantee approaches to the work, identify promising practices, and make this information accessible to the broader field.

These grants are also part of a broader portfolio of programs that advance NEA’s goal from its 2022-2026 Strategic Plan of integrating the arts with strategies that promote the well-being and resilience of people and communities. This includes long-standing programs such as Creative Forces, a partnership with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs that seeks to improve the health, well-being, and quality of life for military and veteran populations exposed to trauma, as well as their families and caregivers. In 2024, the NEA convened a new Interagency Working Group on Arts, Health, and Civic Infrastructure to foster exchanges of insights and information about arts and cultural resources and strategies across federal agencies, with the goal of helping to improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities. The NEA also supports research about the arts’ physiological and psychological impacts on health and social and emotional well-being through its Research Grants in the Arts and NEA Research Labs.