​Considering Harm in Arts in Health: Reflections on NOAH’s September 23 webinar
  
In September 2025, NOAH board members Sloka Iyengar and Sarah Hoover hosted a webinar exploring the critical aspects of harm reduction within arts in health work. Attended by [do we know what roles/fields the participants came from?], the session framed three types of harm that can occur: harm to participants, harm to facilitators, and harm to the art form. Two questions were posed: How does harm show up when the arts are recruited to support health and well-being? And what can we do about it when it happens? Panelists Vanesa Simon (artist and founder, Mariposa Arts) and Queenie Wong (art therapist, Stanford Children’s Health) shared insights about their role and responsibilities as arts facilitators and the steps they take to minimize harm in an honest conversation about a challenging topic.

Caring for the Art: Respecting Tradition
Sloka Iyengar, PhD (neuroscientist and practitioner of Bharatanatyam) introduced the need to acknowledge that there can be inadvertent harm to arts, cultural, and creative practices when utilized for health and well-being. An example is yoga, which can be misunderstood or disrespected when disconnected from its context. She articulated that there is a complex balance between making arts and cultural practices widely accessible while respecting their origins—“not to gatekeep the art form but to honor its context, tradition, and knowledge.” Iyengar has published two papers on this issue: the published manuscripts can be found here. Please contact me for the full-text versions of the papers. 

Caring for Participants: Planning for Safety
For Queenie Wong, reducing harm is foundational to her practice as an art therapist. Her training prepared her to assess the needs of the patient and “match the right material and intervention with the client’s therapeutic needs.” She plans for safety, the potential for emotional triggering, and accessibility, “being intentional about material selection and supporting a safe space for exploration, psychological and emotional processing.” She assesses the client’s response during the session, “knowing when and how to adapt the session, and to reduce harm when spontaneous unconscious material surfaces.”
 
The meaning of the art is created by the client, and harm can occur if the art is misinterpreted. For instance, “red can be understood as symbolic for love, but for them it might be anger. And if they are from East Asian countries, it is associated with luck.” Inappropriate questions may be asked: “A child paints flowers in the garden. A care provider walks into the room and to build rapport says that they are so pretty, not knowing that the session was focused on exploring grief and that the flower represents their image of a dying sibling. While the comment was well intended, it invalidates the child’s emotional experience.”
 
As a therapist, she is trained to guide therapeutic conversation about the artwork her clients create. Grounded in her profession’s training, clinical experience, certification, licensure, and ongoing supervision, Wong is prepared to enter vulnerable emotional territory with clients, where “my priority is the safety of my patient.”
 
Caring for Facilitators: Providing Training and Support
​Vanesa Simon shared that “from the beginning, I’ve been clear with myself and others that I do not facilitate art therapy. My intention has always been to use the arts to support well-being, not to replace clinical care.” Recognizing that she was working without defined role boundaries, “early on, I sought out resources and tools, and I was fortunate to connect with a wonderful art therapist who became a close collaborator and a dear friend. Arts in Health and Art Therapy do not have to be in competition. One does not negate the other. When we respect the boundaries and strengths of each, we can better serve our communities.”
As an employer, Simon asserts that “I prioritize care for teaching artists. I communicate clearly with them, I listen to them about what they’re comfortable facilitating, I advocate for fair pay, and ensure they’re compensated for their time, including planning, setup, cleanup, and travel. I build training into our funding to ensure teaching artists are well prepared.” These employment practices “help them feel confident, supported, and clear about their role, which ultimately benefits the participants as well and protects institutions who partner with Vanesa/Mariposa Arts from possible liabilities.”
“To truly support well-being,” she says, “we must consider harm, not just to participants, but also to the artists doing the work. Arts in Health is not just another art class. It’s a practice that requires care, standards, and careful collaboration.”

The Field of Arts in Health: Defining Roles
While creative arts therapists have formalized educational pathways, structures for supervision, and mechanisms for certification and licensure, the field of Arts in Health does not. “Groundwork needs to be laid at the field level,” according to Sarah Hoover (director and educator, Peabody Performing Arts & Health), such as NOAH’s 2023 Code of Ethics and 2025 Scope of Practice and Core Professional Competencies. “These foundational documents are necessary infrastructure for artistic practice and program administration. They will help facilitators understand their roles and responsibilities and provide framing for employment, education and certification.” And events such as this webinar “help build awareness and foster dialogue and collaboration for all of us working at the intersection of arts and health.”
 
Key Takeaways:

• Recognize that the arts have the power to heal and to harm
• Understanding one’s responsibilities and role boundaries and planning for safety are essential to minimizing harm
• Discussing the differences between arts in health practices and therapeutic practices helps facilitators, health professionals, and program administrators in implementing best practices for participants
• The skills of arts in health practitioners, creative arts therapists, and therapeutic musicians are complementary – a collaborative approach benefits all and extends the reach of the arts throughout institutional and community settings
• There is interest in continuing this important dialogue

NOAH will continue to host periodic webinars and workshops on this and other professional development topics. And look for resources for arts in health professionals within the forthcoming position paper, Advancing Practice in Arts in Health: Artist Workforce Development and Certification, to be released in early November.

For the first session of "Shabd" at the Fort Washington​ New York Public Library, we discussed and put to movement two poems by gaby comprés. 

Participants also made a group poem:
Gift of life:
I cherish.. 
​
My family 
The whole world 
Everything that is beautiful and broken 
New beginnings
Nature
God, our Creator 

One of the participants at the RAIN Total Care Center in the Bronx - Maryann Lyman wrote a poem, inspired by her walks at the Bronx Botanical garden. She thought this poem might make for a good dance piece. 
I love how participants share their art in my class, and that we can incorporate it into what we are doing! 

Participants also made a group poem:
I dream of:
Peace in the world
Love in the world
Sharing (resources)
Care for each other
Time to be
Time to be in nature
Listening to each other
Self-reflection

In a previous post, I talked about the modular nature of Bharatanatyam, and how it gives learners an opportunity to build upon complexity. 
In October 2025, we co-created a jati by combining various steps or movements (adavus). The analogy I used was the adavu as individual words, and the jati as a sentence. We then discussed what things we might consider when making a sentence from words, or a jati from adavus.
Learners said that the jati must fit into the rhythm and that there must be variety in types of adavus or movements and speeds. Below is the writing of a learner as she wrote for the class the various steps in a particular jati. 

On November 16th 2025 at 3pm, I will be presenting work with flutist Zara Lawler and other artists at the Harlem School of the Arts! 

On November 9, musician, historian, and author Kamini Dandapani will come to the YM & YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood for a lecture/demonstration on Indian music. The goal of this session is to demystify Carnatic music, and to learn how Carnatic music is related to Bharatanatyam. 

Images below (PC: Sloka Iyengar)

Images and video below: PC Marina Thomas

Some testimonials:

• "I had a wonderful time, and thank you for letting me know about it." 
• "Hi Sloka!  Great class with Kamini!  It was a good learning experience!😊  Thanks for the performance honoring my request (of you dancing to Kamini's music)! 😊 It’s very nice and we should do more of them in future! 😊" 
• From Kamini: "Thank you for the wonderful opportunity to share my love for Carnatic music today. I had such a blast. What a great community you have built up - it was truly heartwarming to see."
• "Thank you for the special opportunity you created for us. I loved it, and I loved that you demonstrated. I am always mesmerized by the rhythms that you can do with your body. I see it in the point of view of healing. I enjoyed my friend to attend, and she enjoyed the lecture as well. I felt a bit nostalgic about the ragas - I must learn more."
• "I really enjoyed Kamini's presentation and appreciate her depth and knowledge of Indian classical music and history, as well as your insights into the connection of music and Bharatanatyam. Thanks, Sloka!"
• "I love you. My heart sings when you dance."
• From a regular student: "Thank you for inviting Kamini, and for making this available for us." 
• "Thank- you, dear Sloka.  It was lovely to be with you again and to receive such an excellent introduction to South Indian music."

It was great to return back to Marine Park Alliance for Diwali celebrations. I got to see many familiar faces from last year, and meet new people too.
A few pictures and videos below (Image and video credit: Brian Moreno). The event was covered in The Canarsie Courier as well. 

I represented DanceWave for an event in Brooklyn, "Bridging Dance Communities in Brooklyn South" where I worked with 15 NYC Department of Education dance teachers. I led a short lecture and then guide participants through movements and a discussion on the cultural context of Bharatanatyam. 
Participants discussed cross-cultural connections, such as hand gestures or body movements between latin dance, Thai dance, and Indian dance. On the ability to create new gestures with Bharatanatyam, participants created a hasta for "Brooklyn South"! 
After my  session, participants explored and shared ways of community building in their dance classrooms with other dance educators. 
​
Below are a few images (PC: Meredith Katibah)