Community Projects

Telling Our Stories 

Telling Our Stories is a storytelling and recording project that celebrates the resilience of pediatric patients and their families through written and spoken word, songwriting, music, digital art and video. The program invites spoken word artists from New Haven’s “The Word” and Artistic Director, Aaron Jafferis to collaborate with our Arts for Healing team to provide a compelling expressive platform. Patients are empowered to use their creative voice.

Open studio workshops and individual recording sessions offer patients and their caregivers varied access to create a living legacy through sound, music, words and images.  Bedside sessions engage patients unable to leave their rooms. After recording their own heartbeats with a bluetooth-embedded stethoscope, hospitalized young people used their heartbeats to create original musical and lyrical compositions and digital art exploring their identities.  Young people may direct, create, perform, record and edit their works. Each participant takes home the personal expression they create.

The Healing Our Stories special project is funded in part by The Connecticut Office of the Arts, enCourage Kids Foundation, and The Max Ritvo and Alan Slifka Program for the Medical Humanities at the Yale Child Study Center.

Aaron Jafferis, Guest Artist

Aaron Jafferis is a hip-hop poet and playwright recognized nationally and internationally. He is the artistic director of The Word, a spoken word poetry education program in New Haven helping students learn to read, critique and perform poetry to become stronger culture creators.

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