Creative Arts for Veterans Projects

Creative Arts for Veterans is a mobile unit to increase veteran well-being and connectedness through the arts by creating university-community collaborations; leveraging place-based resources; implementing habitual and consistent programming; developing best practices through direct engagement, interaction, and involvement with community organizations, veterans, and veteran organizations, and developing and distributing CAV Books to veterans around the state. The CAV Book is an interdisciplinary-designed therapeutic guidebook to aid in improving well-being through arts-based exercises infused with social work and art therapy practices, veteran narratives, and supplemental veteran-centric wellness resources. CAV Books are accompanied with art supplies (oil pastels, water colored pencils, paintbrush, pencil sharpener, and charcoals). The CAV Book is a take-home, self-paced art-based wellness resource. The CAV Book also contains psychoeducational material regarding suicide, suicidal ideation, grief and loss, survivor’s guilt, moral injury, and resiliency.