Veterans and the Arts Initiative

Niyati Dhokai is a Research Assistant Professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at George Mason University, and she also serves as Program Director for the Veterans and the Arts Initiative at the Hylton Performing Arts Center, which has served over 7,000 community members. The Initiative has been supported by private sector donations and by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the Initiative has received multiple contracts from Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network. Dr. Dhokai has collaborated as co-principal investigator on a cross-disciplinary NEA-funded research study to study the effects of arts engagement on older adults through a randomized control trial (RCT). In recognition of her work, Dr. Dhokai is the 2018 recipient of the Change Maker of the Year award from the Virginia Department of Veterans Services and the 2018 recipient of George Mason University’s Jack Wood Award for Town Gown Relations in the faculty/staff category.

The Veterans and the Arts Initiative is committed to facilitating arts engagement and community engagement for an intergenerational group of Veterans and their families to support their well-being. Through community programming and research, we have demonstrated that there is a need for social engagement for the Veteran community – across generations, in all types of family and social support constructs, and inclusive of all identities, backgrounds, and abilities. We are on the trajectory to becoming a scalable and replicable program, thanks to partnerships through Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network. This program reaches out to those who have served our country and encourages Veterans and Servicemembers to successfully engage in civilian life through the arts, while creating spaces to negotiate family and social relationships and to consider pre- and post-injury transitions for those with “invisible” injuries.

We are looking to solve the issue of social isolation and the need for wellness, community engagement, and peer to peer support in community settings through the arts for Veterans and Servicemembers who are transitioning to civilian life, reestablishing family connections in a new setting, and considering the effects of service and/or conflict, as well as “invisible injuries” such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) on their typical functioning and ability to live content and fulfilling lives.  Based on five years of programming and research efforts, we are finding that arts engagement has a significant effect on the psychosocial health of those who we serve, especially during these challenging times when we all have to significantly impact our daily lives due to COVID-19.

Within the Commonwealth of Virginia, there are over 700,000 Veterans, and there are over 18 million Veterans in the United States, and this number increases globally.  The affecting the quality of life of Veterans, Servicemembers, and their families locally are similar to those that affect Veterans nationally and globally inclusive of all eras of military service, how they identify and/or they background, abilities, and opportunities and/or barriers that they may face.

The Veterans and the Arts Initiative has served as an arts and community hub for our local Veterans, Servicemembers, their families, and community members since 2014. The Initiative has brought our community together at the Hylton Performing Arts Center to engage with the arts through performances, workshops, lessons, exhibitions, and special events that have featured the arts. Past offerings have included music, visual art, dance, and poetry. The intended benefit of the Veterans and the Arts Initiative is to facilitate community engagement through local arts organizations and educators, establishing lasting connections to the arts and supporting strong social relationships within the community.

The Initiative is comprised of a hybrid community engagement and programming arm, as well as an ongoing research agenda and advocacy efforts. Community outreach programming has included 10-week guitar and ukulele workshop series’ and jam sessions, visual arts workshops, poetry workshops and readings, and a community-wide Veterans and the Arts celebration during the week of Veterans Day. The research agenda includes understanding the social, cognitive, and physical effects of arts engagement on Veterans, Servicemembers, and the adult family members who participate in our workshops, including cross-disciplinary collaboration with colleagues in the College of Education and Human Development.

The Initiative directly serves our Veterans, Servicemembers, military families, and military caregivers. To date, over the Initiative has impacted over 7,000 individuals. This program began with the intention of serving Veterans in the Prince William County/Manassas region of Northern Virginia. Since its inception, we have forged strong partnerships with Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network, as well as research faculty within the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University, and are now seen as a national leader in Veterans and arts programming. The program serves Veterans from all eras, from as far back as WWII, and from all branches of the military. Our participants are as diverse as the armed forces themselves, representing a wide breadth of nationalities, races and/or ethnicities, cultures, ability levels, and socio-economic resources.

Veterans, Servicemembers, and their families often face frequent moves and find themselves in new communities where they feel “left behind” in terms of establishing personal, family, and community identity. Through our engagement with the Veterans and military communities, we have come to discover that they benefit greatly from uniquely tailored arts programming. The arts are a powerful tool in welcoming this population back into community life after (or even during) military service, because the arts serve as a pivotal starting point to learn a new skill, reflect on personal preferences, and meet new friends and neighbors.

As a bicultural person who identifies as Indian-American, I have been exceptionally interested in how identity affects learning processes. After I completed my Ph.D., I had the opportunity to teach music to a woman Veteran who was recovering from severe injuries while reintegrating into civilian life. I learned so much about how her military training and personal identity affected her post-injury motivation and learning processes, and I continued to teach and/or facilitate arts opportunities for Veterans in post-acute neurorehabilitation for several years, which allowed me to collaborate with a multi-disciplinary health team and understand the impact of arts engagement on health and well-being.            

At George Mason University, I had the opportunity to design for a larger Veteran community – first, we focused our efforts on Prince William County, and we then began to serve Veterans across Northern Virginia.  As we have continued to meet more members of the military community and learn about their experiences, we have adapted our offerings to be as inclusive and accessible as possible for equitable participation, and we are always learning and listening. Our efforts are collaborative across the Hylton Performing Arts Center, the College of Visual and Performing Arts, the University, and the community.

As a bicultural American, I found a sense of community within the arts, and working with our Veterans, Servicemembers, and their families allows me the opportunity to share the joy of arts and community with others. My favorite part of the Veterans and the Arts Initiative is welcoming people at the door when they first arrive at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. I love watching them pick up an instrument or paint brush for the first time, facilitating social connections that help transcend personal limitations and that encourage collaborative learning, and seeing a smile during the process of creating – whether it be a line of music or a portion of a painting or a verse of poetry – that indicates contentment and/or joy. That feeling of contentment can be an incredibly powerful tool to transcend personal limitations and barriers to access. It can also provide the confidence to create meaningful social connections.  As we often say at the Hylton Center, “the arts create community.”

I have taught music for over 20 years, completed graduate studies studying the institutionalization of diasporic arts forms, received a Fulbright grant to examine the impact of regional music culture and women’s music on social change in Gujarat, India (the state that Gandhi is from), and completed postdoctoral work in music and health. I have worked with cross-disciplinary health teams to facilitate music opportunities for Veterans and Servicemembers in post-acute neurorehabilitation for five years, and I have directed GMU’s Veterans and the Arts Initiative as a consultant and program director from its formal conception as a program in 2015 through the present.

At GMU, I have had the opportunity to serve thousands of Veterans and Servicemembers across the region (and now nationally due to our pivot to virtual programming because of COVID-19), and I have innovated pedagogy and program delivery alongside a talented team of faculty and staff across the College of Visual and Performing Arts. With initial findings about our impact through IRB research that examines cross-disciplinary questions about music and health, we are contributing to national and international conversations about music and health for Veterans through presentations and peer-reviewed publications.             

We are in a unique position to deliver further programming and create meaningful solutions that are scalable and replicable through our implementation of programming and research and our continued joy in listening to those who we serve and those who are doing the work alongside us, engaging in new conversations, and finding new collaborations.

“Belonging” has been one of my biggest challenges on a professional and personal level. As the program director of George Mason University’s Veterans and the Arts Initiative, I am typically the only Indian-American woman in the room with a “unique” name that is not easy to pronounce and with a perspective that is often bit different, because I advocate for the military to the arts world and for arts to the military world.

I have learned that the most important part of any interaction is meeting people where they are and determining if there are opportunities to collaborate. I share who I am and who I represent, and I ask the people who I encounter to share who they are – on a professional or personal level, depending on what seems most appropriate for an interaction. In my experience, the best way to transform obstacles into opportunities is by creating mutual respect.  By doing so, I have the ability to learn from every experience – to replicate interactions and events that have met or exceeded my expectations and to gain insight on how to improve.

My first Veterans Day Celebration event at GMU was in 2015. I prepared by learning about the local Veteran community, having many conversations with Veterans and their families, learning about local arts organizations, and considering how to bring all of the information that I had learned together to create an impactful event. I had a stellar team of staff at the Hylton Performing Arts Center who served as my local guides – their best insights included telling me about their community’s strengths and their community’s limitations.

I asked how we would define success, and I was told that we needed to have approximately 200 people attend.  So, I asked approximately 200 people to participate (and sent individual thank you notes after), became overjoyed when approximately 500 people participated (and greeted many of them personally), and gathered feedback (including criticism) to create a sustainable program model. To capture the hearts and minds of others, I strongly believe that one has to create a space for those hearts and minds to meaningfully engage with their communities – to arrive as who they are, to be given the best opportunities to succeed, and to feel included, heard, content, and hopeful about the future.

The Veterans and the Arts Initiative is the only program of its kind in the country, because it integrates community-based arts programming targeted towards Veterans, Servicemembers, and their families and military caregivers in an institution of higher education. Furthermore, the university-based performing arts center where the Veterans and the Arts Initiative resides is built under a tripartite agreement between the City of Manassas, Prince William County, and the Commonwealth of Virginia as George Mason University. Therefore, in addition being a university-based performing arts center, Hylton Performing Arts Center’s mission is to serve the community, which it strives to do through many of its programs including the Veterans and the Arts Initiative. 

By drawing upon the artists, teachers, performers, and researchers available to us in a research university setting, and combining their talents with those available within the civilian and Veteran communities, we have a strong number of supporters whose impact has allowed us to create a strongly successful and sustainable program that could potentially be replicated elsewhere.

The Veterans and the Arts Initiative provides community arts programming in two ways: arts events and arts workshops. Arts events are for many community members to partake in passive arts engagement, and arts workshops are for active arts engagement. The initial output is that the community gains connection to the arts, which they pursue through further passive and active engagement. Through the workshops, they also begin to achieve goals, reduce social isolation, and gain strategies to enhance a sense of well-being.

Through five years of programming, of which over three years includes workshops, we are now seeing short-term and long-term outcomes. Members of our Veteran community are taking ownership of the skills to participate in their own music groups, make music with their families, attend jam sessions for the Veteran community, and help us strategize for additional engagement opportunities. We are seeing long-term effects as well; one of our Veterans, who originally began his guitar practice through our Veterans Guitar Workshops, now teaches a senior music group on a weekly basis. He takes the music and the community-building skills that he has learned from the Veterans and the Arts Initiative, and he shares these skills with others; he confidently provides testimony in many of our media interviews.            

Dr. Dhokai, as program director and a researcher, has conducted a longitudinal IRB-approved study on the initial impacts of the workshops, which includes surveys and semi-structured interviews. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, including Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network, and she has shared her findings at conferences such as Gerontological Society of America and in international peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Applied Arts & Health. She has also conducted cross-disciplinary research on the Veterans and the Arts Initiative workshops with colleagues in the College of Education and Human Development to produce more nuanced mixed-methods data findings for the Virginia Commission for the Arts and for Creative Forces.

We have served over 7,000 Veterans, Servicemembers, military family members and caregivers.

Because of the virtual platform, it is difficult to predict future growth. We have, however, experienced exponential growth over the past four months with the transition to virtual events (vs. in person) required by social distancing efforts. For example, our ukulele workshops grew from 25 participants to 85 participants between March to May due to the online move.

-       Funding, especially continued funding and growth funding during the current climate

-       Personnel capacity

-       COVID-19/shutdowns barriers to in-person instruction, though virtual has been successful (and even grown the reach of the program)

Our plan is to scale our programming as needed during the coming years to make sure that it is sustainable during uncertain times of COVID-19, and we are confident in our ability to do so.

-       George Mason University, including College of Visual and Performing Arts, College of Science, Hylton Performing Arts Center, and Mason Community Arts Academy

-       17 Veterans Service Organizations and community organizations, including:

o   Northern Virginia Veterans Association

o   Prince William Chamber of Commerce Veterans Council

o   Serving Together Fairfax Collective

o   Fort Belvoir Collaborative

o   Joint Leadership Council of Veterans Organizations

-       19 Arts Organizations

-       Military Bases and Installations, and Government Agencies, including:

o   Marine Corps Base Quantico

o   Fort Belvoir Army Installation

o   The Pentagon

o   Library of Congress

o   Virginia War Memorial

o   Virginia Department of Veteran Services

o   Virginia World War I Commission

o   World War II Commission

o   Virginia Commission for the Arts

o   Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network

All programs and workshops within the Veterans and the Arts Initiative are free to all participants. Support for this program is obtained through a combination of private philanthropy, research grants, and state appropriation support by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The programs provided to our beneficiaries are:

-       Community-based arts programming, comprised of:

o   Hands-on arts workshops in guitar, ukulele, visual arts, songwriting, and poetry

o   Community-wide celebrations and performances in a festival-like setting

-       IRB-research

-       Advocacy at the local, state, and national level

These programs are designed by the Veterans and the Arts Initiative’s professional staff, and delivered through professional arts faculty of George Mason University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, as well as professional and volunteer artists from local arts organizations. Programs are largely delivered at the Hylton Center, though we have begun to expand our reach through other venues in the Northern Virginia region, as well as deliver virtual content in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Response to the Veterans and the Arts Initiative has been overwhelmingly positive, and our program continues to adapt and grow to meet the community’s needs and requests. Examples of this have been adding a Level II guitar workshop for more advanced players, expanding the Veterans Day celebration to a week-long event, growing the Songwriting Series for Military Kids, and expanding our research and advocacy efforts.

The Veterans and the Arts Initiative has been successful in developing a varied and sustainable revenue stream to support its research and community-based programming. Those revenue streams include:

-       Public, state-level support via a state appropriation, renewed on an annual basis, since calendar year 2020.

-       Private philanthropy, provided by individual donors

-       Corporate philanthropy, through corporate sponsorship of the Veterans and the Arts Initiative and corporate grants

-       Private Foundation support, through awarded grants

-       Research support, through research grants

-       Contracts awarded, including a contract with Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

-       Institutional salary and fringe support by George Mason University

All programs are free to all participants of the Veterans and the Arts Initiative.

Revenue for the past 12 months (July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020):

-       State Support: $150,000 state appropriation

-       Private Philanthropy (individual, corporate, foundation): $108,740

-       Research Support: apply to research grants through NEA and Creative Forces

-       Contracts: Ex. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

The Veterans and the Arts Initiative seeks to plan programming, both community-based and research activities, that meet and do not exceed the funding available for any given fiscal year. The Initiative works with the professional development staff of the Hylton Center in seeking private philanthropic support. We work with Mason’s Government and Community Relations team in seeking state-level support and renewal. The Initiative staff also works directly with prospective supporters, including contractors such as Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, to secure additional funding. Programs for the coming fiscal year are planned in close coordination with fundraising efforts.

Estimated expenses for FY21 (July 1, 2020 – June 30, 2021) are $203,863. This includes a combination of program and staff support.

The Veterans and the Arts Initiative, and the work of Dr. Niyati Dhokai, was recommended for The Elevate Prize by a colleague at the Hylton Performing Arts Center, who recognized Dr. Dhokai’s profound impact on the Veterans community, as well as her capacity to deeply impact Veterans, Servicemembers, and their families and caregivers across the nation. An award of this magnitude would be a game-changer for the Veterans and the Arts Initiative, providing not only monetary support for the public-facing programs and research, but also a deep level of international recognition for the importance of this work and its effect on those who have served. The mentorship portion of this prize has the capacity of propel the work of the Veterans and the Arts Initiative to the national-stage, enabling us to truly become a replicable and scalable program to be implemented in Veteran communities throughout the country.

We are looking to contribute to the conversation at the national level, and we are looking to be put in touch with leaders in the national nonprofit and government sectors.

We are open to suggestions.