Arts in Health Roundtables

Session 8: Arts & Health Convening

April 10, 2026 | 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Arts & Health convening at MaineHealth Lifestyle Medicine in Brunswick, Maine.

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Session 7: Community Arts & Public Health

March 20, 2026 | 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

For arts, social service, and healthcare organizations, artists, and teaching artists interested in community arts and public health.

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Session 6: Youth & Mental Health

February 20, 2026 | 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

For arts, social service, and healthcare organizations, artists, and teaching artists interested in youth and mental health.

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Session 5: Creative Aging

January 16, 2026 | 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

For arts organizations, artists, and teaching artists across all disciplines interested in creative aging.

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Session 4: Social Prescription

December 19, 2025 | 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

For arts organizations, artists, and healthcare professionals interested in social prescription.

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Session 3: Veterans Arts & Service Providers

December 12, 2025 | 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

For veterans arts and service providers.

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Session 2: Community Partners

October 31, 2025 | 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

For community partners interested in learning more about arts and health.

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Session 1: Arts and Health

October 24, 2025 | 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

For arts organizations, artists, and teaching artists interested in arts and health.

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Arts & Health Convening

April 10, 2026 | MaineHealth Lifestyle Medicine, Brunswick, Maine

Watch videos from the convening.

Community Arts & Public Health

March 20, 2026 | 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Watch the recording: The session recording is available below.

Mira Ptacin

Topic: Making Room: Arts, Care, and Health in Shared and Restricted Spaces

Mira Ptacin is a narrative journalist, memoirist, and educator. She is the author of the award-winning memoir Poor Your Soul and The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna, and is a New York Times-bestselling ghostwriter. For more than a decade, Mira has taught writing in prisons and community spaces across Maine, using arts-based practices to build trust, agency, and connection in places shaped by constraint. Her reporting and essays have appeared in outlets including The New York Times, Harper’s, and The Atavist, and her teaching and creative work are grounded in the belief that art is not ornamental but infrastructural, one of the quiet ways communities learn how to tend to one another. She is the 2025-2026 Writer in Residence at Mechanics Hall, the 2026 Maine Arts Commission Literary Fellow, and lives on Peaks Island with her family.

www.miramptacin.com

Tanja Kunz

Tanja Kunz is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of visual art, cultural heritage, and community engagement. She is currently an interdisciplinary PhD candidate at the University of Maine, where her dissertation addresses topics in anthropology, including medicine, labor, and gender, with arts-based research.

Dr. Samuel Woodworth

Topic: Incorporating Visual Art into Medical Education

Sam is a hospitalist at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine. He leads an art museum-based course for medical students, Practicing Curiosity, and he will complete the Art Museum-based Health Profession Education Fellowship through the Harvard Macy Institute at Harvard Medical School in 2026. Dr. Woodworth has published several peer-reviewed manuscripts discussing the intersection of visual art, curiosity, and medicine in journals including The American Journal of Medicine, Academic Medicine, and The Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Jordia Benjamin

Topic: Indigo Arts Alliance

With over 15 years of visionary leadership in the cultural sector, Jordia Benjamin has dedicated their career to advancing the role of the arts as a catalyst for community transformation, equity, and collective memory. A seasoned arts administrator, Benjamin has led a cultural organization, museum departments, and developed nationally and internationally recognized programs that have shaped policy and centered inclusion, access, and the power of storytelling.

As the Executive Director of Indigo Arts Alliance, Benjamin has stewarded million-dollar budgets, led teams through periods of rapid growth and change, and forged lasting partnerships across disciplines and geographies. Whether building residency programs for underrepresented artists, reimagining museum collections through a decolonial lens, or mentoring the next generation of cultural workers, Benjamin leads with integrity, purpose, and vision.

indigoartsalliance.me

Becca Boulos

Topic: Maine Public Health Association

Becca is Executive Director of Maine Public Health Association. Her career in public health spans more than 20 years, having worked for research institutions and nonprofit organizations. She received her PhD from Tufts University, Master of Public Health degree from Yale University, and BA from The George Washington University. Becca is the Past Chair of the American Public Health Association’s Action Board. In 2025, she was recognized with the APHA Council of Affiliates’ Chairs Citation for her federal advocacy efforts and in 2023 with the APHA Outstanding Affiliate Staff of the Year Award.

www.mainepublichealth.org

Karl Schatz

Topic: Community Plate

Karl Schatz is the co-founder and Executive Director of Community Plate. A Maine native, he received his undergraduate degree from Tufts University and his master’s in communications from the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He is an award-winning journalist and storyteller who has worked at ABC Television and Time magazine. Together with his wife and Community Plate co-founder, Margaret Hathaway, he has published seven books on food, farming, and community, including two volumes of the award-winning Maine Community Cookbooks. These books, plus 20 years developing a philosophy and practice around hospitality and community building, provided the inspiration and foundation for the creation of Story Sharing Potluck Suppers. Karl’s work with Community Plate has been featured on The TODAY Show, NBC Nightly News, NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, and in print in The National Civic Review and The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. In April 2025 he was named one of 25 innovators tackling the loneliness epidemic in 2025 by Reimagine’s Making Connections web series. He is a co-founder and serves on the steering committee for the Maine Coalition for Social Connection, and on the boards of the Maine Coast Waldorf School and Northeast Storytelling.

Analtina Constantino, Alison Gorman, MD, and Natalie Fleming

Topic: Greater Portland Health

Analtina Constantino is an Angolan poet and writer. She is the author of a published book and was named Best Poet of Angola in 2023 and 2024. She creates digital content and shares poetry, reflections, and creative expression across social media.

Alison Gorman, MD is a family physician who has worked at Greater Portland Health, a federally qualified health center in Portland, since 2012. Passionate about community health, meaningful and inclusive gatherings, and artistic expression, Dr. Gorman has been fortunate to bring Arts in Healthcare to Greater Portland Health.

Natalie Fleming is a Family Nurse Practitioner at Greater Portland Health. She has a passion for community health and especially serving under-resourced populations. She loves to uncover the often hidden artistic talents of her patients and colleagues and has seen firsthand the power of art as medicine.

Youth & Mental Health

February 20, 2026 | 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Watch the recording: The session recording is available below.

Emma Zimmerman

Emma is a writer and journalist. Her work has appeared in publications that include HuffPost, The Boston Globe, Outside, Runner’s World, and Tokens. Her literary honors include a George Bennett Fellowship, a writing residency at Phillips Exeter Academy, and a “Notable Nonfiction” selection in The Best American Essays anthology. She has taught courses and workshops at institutions that include NYU, Phillips Exeter Academy, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Central Maine Community College, and The Electric Cottage Collective in Brunswick. Her debut book, Body Songs: A Memoir of Long Covid Recovery, is forthcoming from Penguin in the fall of 2026.

www.emmamzimmerman.com

Margaret Horton

Margaret is an author from Cumberland, Maine, and currently a senior at Baxter Academy for Technology and Science. Through organizations like The Telling Room, Margaret has been featured in several anthologies, and she published her debut novel, Unnamed, in 2024. She fell in love with creative writing at four years old, but it was through the isolation and unique situation during the COVID pandemic that she began to use writing as a therapeutic technique.

Kristina M.J. Powell

Topic: The Telling Room

Kristina has dedicated her career to community building and Maine-based nonprofits. She graduated from Bowdoin College with her BA in Anthropology and worked in cross-cultural exchange programs at the Council on International Educational Exchange. At Bates College, she served as Associate Director, designing and implementing new programs for underrepresented alumni, students, and their families. Kristina later managed the development team at The Center for Grieving Children, and in 2021 received her MBA while serving as the Director of The Berwick Fund at Berwick Academy. She currently serves as the Executive Director of The Telling Room.

www.tellingroom.org

Meghan Scribner

Topic: How Arts in Education Fosters Connection: Belonging by Design

Meghan is the Arts Integration Specialist at Side x Side. Meghan is an interdisciplinary artist and educator with a master’s degree in counseling, art therapy, and fine arts. She has always been curious about the interplay between the arts and resilience in education and mental and physical health. Meghan brings a breadth of experience and creative energy to Side x Side. Her work includes curriculum and program development, collaborative teaching, and professional development design and implementation.

sidexsideme.com

Jamie Silvestri

Topic: Community-Based Art Therapy: Showing Up Directly Where People Live

Jamie is the Program Director, Art Therapist, and founder of ArtVan. In 2004, Art Therapist Jamie Silvestri founded ArtVan out of a deep commitment to community wellbeing, relationship building, and an all-inclusive population-focused approach. For 17 years, she worked with inner-city youth and in psychiatric care hospitals, and for 21 years she has worked with ArtVan. She envisioned a program that would bring art therapy directly into neighborhoods with limited access to social services, afterschool programs, and summer activities. ArtVan expanded to additional populations, working to empower and strengthen people of all abilities to support their mental health and creative self-expression for healing.

www.artvanprogram.org

Kimberly Leighton

Topic: Play Warriors: The Healing Power of Art in Child Life Therapy

Kimberly Leighton, MS, CCLS, RYT is a Maine native and the creator of Play Warriors, a private practice dedicated to expanding access to child life therapy beyond hospital walls. Her work integrates therapeutic art as a central tool to support children navigating medical diagnoses, trauma, grief and loss, and significant life transitions. She has also guided young authors in publishing six children’s books rooted in therapeutic expression.

In addition to her clinical and leadership roles, Kimberly serves on the board of Tucker’s House, a women’s sober living home in Bridgton, Maine. She was recently selected as the keynote speaker for the New England Child Life Professionals Conference and continues to advocate nationally for education, access, and innovation within the child life profession.

www.playwarriorsinc.com

McKenzie Blanchard

Topic: Portland Symphony Orchestra

McKenzie Blanchard serves as the Director of Learning and Community Impact at the Portland Symphony Orchestra, where she creates and leads educational programs and outreach across Maine and New Hampshire. Before settling in Maine in 2023, McKenzie was an elementary music educator in the Nashua Public Schools in Nashua, New Hampshire, where she taught Kindergarten through Fifth Grade general music and directed two choirs. McKenzie holds two degrees from the University of New Hampshire: a master’s degree in teaching and a bachelor’s degree in music education. She always felt called to come back to Maine, where she grew up, and is passionate about giving back to the community that raised her. In her free time, McKenzie enjoys being outside, especially by the ocean, and spending time with her family.

Eisha Khan

Topic: The SHAW Challenge: Strengthening School-Based Mental Health in Maine

Eisha Khan is a Kashmiri Muslim American public health professional specializing in addressing health-related social needs in rural and racially diverse communities. With a master’s degree in Global Health from Harvard University, she manages Social Drivers of Health efforts and the Youth Mental Health program at MaineHealth. Previously, at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, she developed impactful trauma-informed programs supporting refugees. Eisha’s expertise lies in advancing health equity, including creating equity-focused quality dashboards for MaineHealth’s Planning Department, developing plans for a statewide federal grant addressing maternal opioid addiction, and her current work managing MaineHealth’s Social Drivers of Health screening efforts and overseeing youth mental health initiatives.

Creative Aging

January 16, 2026 | 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Watch the recording: The session recording is available below.

Jeri Pitcher

Jeri Pitcher is a teaching artist, theater director, and educator. Her work is dedicated to devising original theater through a collaborative group process. Pitcher is an adjunct theater instructor at The University of Maine at Augusta. She has worked as a guest collaborator at Colby College, devising an original theater/dance performance entitled Of This Place to open the new Gordon Center for the Performing Arts in 2024. Pitcher also works with Maine Media College in Rockport as an executive assistant and grant writer.

In the summer of 2022, Pitcher worked with the Center Theatre in Dover-Foxcroft through the Maine Arts Commission’s Creative Aging Program, creating a performance piece entitled IMPACT. IMPACT is a devised work created by the group assembled through a series of five workshop sessions. It consists of scenes and monologues that respond to the question, “What has meaning for you? And, what would you like to say about what has meaning for you?” IMPACT is designed to encourage conversation and was shared with a talkback after the reading.

Barbara Sanford Epps

Barbara Sanford Epps is an experienced artist educator with her master’s in education, specializing in multiple styles of learning through the creative arts. She is also a professional vocalist and utilizes movement and music to heal, uplift, and enhance wellbeing. Barbara designs arts-based programming for people of all ages in individual and group settings.

She is interested in connecting and partnering with nonprofits and other agencies or organizations that would like to develop the arts as a pathway for improving quality of life, supporting self-expression, reducing stress, improving artistic skills, and bringing joy as people learn in a healthy, safe environment that creates community and improves wellbeing through the arts.

Meriah Hope

Topic: Creative Aging Maine

Meriah Hope joined the Maine Council on Aging in January 2025 as an Age Equity Program Manager. She began her career in the world of Interfaith Volunteer Caregiving and quickly found that helping older adults live their best lives was “heart work” for her. Meriah worked in that world in small rural programs, then at the state and national level, helping the movement transition from its roots with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation into an independent national organization. A special interest in memory care led her to develop a volunteer training program for individuals providing respite to caregivers of loved ones with dementia. She then spent years with the primary title of “Mom,” while teaching dance, doing motivational coaching, and flower farming. When Meriah began to learn about ageism through the Maine Council on Aging, she found the intersection of her previous work with older adults and her passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion. As an Age Equity Program Manager with the Maine Council on Aging, she currently works as Lead Facilitator for the Leadership Exchange on Ageism, heads the Creative Aging project in partnership with the Maine Arts Commission, and leads the Age-Positive Workforce Initiative. Meriah holds a degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of South Dakota.

mainecouncilonaging.org
www.creativeaging.me

Julie Kline

Topic: Creative Aging Teaching Artist and Organization Training

Julie Kline serves as Director of Program Strategy at Lifetime Arts, a nationally recognized nonprofit advancing creative aging, an evidence-based approach that combines hands-on arts learning with social engagement to support healthy aging. She provides strategic leadership for the organization’s large-scale initiatives to expand access to creative aging programs nationwide and embed the practice within public health, cultural policy, and aging services. In this role, Julie cultivates cross-sector partnerships, develops new initiatives, and leads a national team of creative aging experts, trainers, and guest artists. She also represents Lifetime Arts nationally as a speaker and thought leader contributing to field-building efforts across the creative aging sector. With more than 15 years of experience as a theater artist, program administrator, and advocate, Julie has worked with Elders Share the Arts, intergenerational ensemble Roots & Branches Theater, and as a multiple grantee of SPARC/SU-CASA, funded by New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department for the Aging. She holds a BFA from The Theatre School at DePaul University and is a New York City-based director, writer, and actor.

lifetimearts.org
Public Training: lifetimearts.org/work/foundations

Carolyn Halpin-Healy

Topic: Arts & Minds

With 25 years’ experience as a museum educator and a strong belief in the power of museums to promote wellbeing, Carolyn Halpin-Healy founded Arts & Minds with Columbia University neurologist James M. Noble, MD, to provide museum-based experiences for people with dementia and their care partners at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Partner organizations now include El Museo del Barrio, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Jewish Museum. She has trained museum staff and volunteers from the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia to conduct person-centered art dialogue and art making that keeps individuals with Alzheimer’s disease in touch with themselves, cognitively, socially, emotionally, and artistically. A member of the teaching team at The Met, Halpin-Healy holds a BA in Art and Art History from Stony Brook University, an MA in the History of Art from Williams College, and a Graduate Certificate in Adult Learning from the City University of New York. She publishes in peer-reviewed journals and presents regularly at professional conferences. Arts & Minds is a winner of the 2015 Rosalinde Gilbert Innovations in Alzheimer’s Disease Caregiving Legacy Award, recognized specifically for valuing diversity.

www.artsandminds.org
Training: www.artsandminds.org/training.html

Hollie Ecker

Topic: Arts & Minds

Hollie Ecker is a Senior Educator at Arts & Minds. She has worked extensively as a teaching artist and museum educator for visitors of all ages and abilities at major museums in New York City, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. As a Fulbright Scholar, Hollie spent time in Italy developing and implementing school/museum partnerships for deaf students with the Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Massimo. Hollie holds a BA in Art History from Wesleyan University and an MA and M.Ed from Columbia University Teachers College. Her studio practice is varied and is currently focused on ceramic arts.

www.artsandminds.org
Training: www.artsandminds.org/training.html

Social Prescribing

December 19, 2025 | 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Watch the recording: The session recording is available below.

Maya Williams

Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who served as Portland, Maine’s seventh poet laureate for a July 2021 to July 2024 term. Maya has an MSW in Social Work from University of New England and an MFA in Creative Writing from Randolph College. Eir debut full-length poetry collection, Judas & Suicide (Game Over Books, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a New England Book Award. Their second full-length poetry collection, Refused a Second Date (Harbor Editions, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. They won two chapbook prizes: What’s So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway? won Garden Party Collective’s Chapbook Prize in 2024, selected by Mónica Teresa Ortiz; and Feminine Morbidity won The Headlight Review’s Chapbook Prize, selected by Olatunde Osinaike, in 2025.

mayawilliamspoet.com

Chris Appleton

Topic: Art Pharmacy

Chris Appleton is the Founder and CEO of Art Pharmacy, a social prescribing company that works with partners in healthcare, education, and workforce management to address the dual mental health and loneliness crises in the United States. Chris holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management with a Certificate in Healthcare Leadership. Appleton and his work have been featured in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, Forbes, ABC, CBS, NPR, TEDx, Fast Company, and more. Appleton’s commitment to servant leadership, family, and civic engagement has led him to receive numerous awards and honors, including the Americans for the Arts National Emerging Leader Award, Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Inaugural Healthcare Champion Award, Emory Center for Creativity and the Arts Community Impact Award, Atlanta Business Chronicle 40 Under 40, Georgia Trend’s 100 Notable Georgians, World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers, New Leaders Council Alumni Award, 2019 Class of Leadership Atlanta, and Outstanding Atlanta Class of 2014.

His service includes his role as a member of the Board of Directors with the Foundation for Social Connection and the Grady Hospital Ambassador Force Advisory Board, creating awareness and providing vital support for the Grady Health System. Appleton has served on numerous additional boards, including the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Affordable Housing Advisory Board, Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Council, Atlanta Celebrates Photography, Alliance Theatre Advisory Board, Health Connect South Advisory Board, and more. At the heart of Chris’s life’s work, he believes that lasting, sustainable change happens when people work across boundaries and barriers. Appleton and his wife, Annie, who works for Sartain Lanier Family Foundation, live in Atlanta with their two young children.

Lee Klarman

Topic: United Way of Southern Maine

As Director, Community Resiliency at United Way of Southern Maine, Lee Klarman is dedicated to helping individuals and families thrive during and beyond times of crisis. With more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Lee leads collaborative efforts to ensure that community members with the least access to resources can connect to the care and support they need. Within this framework, United Way of Southern Maine is working to bring a social prescription program to Maine. He holds degrees in Visual Arts, and Community and Justice Studies from Guilford College, and a master’s degree in Policy, Planning, and Non-Profit Management from the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. Lee resides along the Saco River, and outside of work, he enjoys hiking to waterfalls with his family and dogs, growing garlic, and maintaining a lifelong passion for artistic creation.

www.uwsme.org

Dr. Erik Holmgren

Topic: Mass Cultural Council

Dr. Erik Holmgren has overseen the development and scaling of the Mass Cultural Council’s groundbreaking work in the social prescription of arts experiences, in addition to his work leading the Creative Youth Development and Education team at the agency. His work is founded on the belief that sustainable funding for the arts will not come from the arts sector. Instead, it will come from the sectors the arts have outcomes in. Prior to his work at the Council, Dr. Holmgren was a concert saxophonist, performing with a diverse group of organizations from the United States Military Academy Band at West Point to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He was on faculty at Columbia University, and his writing has been published in magazines, journals, and most recently, by Routledge.

Veterans Art

December 12, 2025 | 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Watch the recording: The session recording is available below.

Ron Capps

Ron Capps is a memoirist, songwriter, and playwright. His plays have been staged by community and regional theaters, colleges, and at U.S. and international festivals. His 2014 memoir, Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years, was a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award. Ron studied creative writing at Johns Hopkins and Fairfield, and songwriting at Berklee College of Music. He is a disabled combat veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the founder of the Veterans Writing Project, a nonprofit that provides free writing workshops for veterans. In 2017, the Johns Hopkins University awarded Ron the Anne Smedinghoff Award for “a life dedicated to service, social justice, and a commitment to others.” Ron is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. He lives in Maine.

SeriouslyNotAllRight.com
RonCappsMusic.com

Matt Aelmore

Topic: Creative Forces® Community Engagement Grant Program

Since 2021, Matt Aelmore has served as the Grant Coordinator at Mid-America Arts Alliance for the Creative Forces® Community Engagement Grant Program, which has awarded over 100 grants to arts projects benefiting military-connected communities across the country. Matt is a nonprofit professional who has spent his career working to build the capacity of community organizations. As an AmeriCorps volunteer, he provided classroom support to students in a communities-in-schools initiative in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood. Prior to joining Mid-America Arts Alliance, Matt served as Compliance Director at Pittsburgh’s workforce development board, where he led an initiative to help community organizations develop sustainable administrative policies. While working on Creative Forces, Matt collaborates with prospective grantees, current grantees, and NEA partners to build a community of practice for military/arts program providers.

Outside of his work as a grant administrator, Matt is an accomplished musician who has recorded and performed with a wide variety of artists, including funk legend Betty Davis and Indonesian dangdut superstar Rhoma Irama. He holds degrees in music theory and composition from Wichita State University, Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Creative Forces®

Lori Bryant

Topic: Maine Veterans Project

Lori Bryant is a Maine-based visual artist and U.S. Army Veteran whose work explores emotional landscapes and the healing power of art. Her paintings often reflect the layered experience of living with PTSD and the role art has played in her own recovery. Lori is the facilitator of the Healing Art Program at the Maine Veterans Project, where she guides veterans and their plus-ones in using art as a grounding, restorative practice. Her trauma-informed and community-centered approach reflects her belief that creativity offers connection and meaningful pathways to healing for military-connected individuals.

Amber Walker

Topic: Turning the Page: Creative Healing for Veterans

Amber Walker is a Maine-based artist, clinical social worker, and veteran. After earning her MSW from the University of New England, she served ten years in the U.S. Air Force. She continues her uniformed service today as the Lead Behavioral Health Officer in the Maine Army National Guard. Her passion for art in her clinical practice led her to become a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist in 2024. For over two decades, Amber has immersed herself in art journaling and has expanded into workshops for veterans, students, and trauma survivors. Her mixed media work, including her 2022 series of 365 dresses, has been exhibited in art galleries across Maine. She has also been featured in Studio Visit Magazine and more than fifteen issues of Stampington & Company’s Art Journaling magazine. Her body of work is intuitive and often incorporates themes of women and the pursuit of freedom.

Jemma Gascoine

Topic: Pottery with Veterans

Jemma Gascoine, born in London, UK, is showing her tiny pots, “thrown off a hump,” at the Center for Maine Craft in Gardiner as part of their Tiny Treasures show. She has shown her functional pottery and clay sculpture in museums and galleries across the state for the last twenty years. She and her assistants at Monson Pottery in Monson, Maine, sell their handmade work locally, statewide, and nationally.

Gascoine has been teaching clay for twenty years. She has taught Adult Education in Monson, Dover, and Bangor; taught high school students, homeschool students, art teachers through the Maine Art Education Association, veterans, and most recently Girl Scouts. She feels fortunate that she loves her work.

moc.eniocsagammej@ammej
Watch Jemma Gascoine’s video

Peter Bruun

Artist, curator, and community organizer Peter Bruun co-founded Studio B in 2022 to use art and story for community justice and wellbeing in Maine. After decades in Baltimore, he relocated to Maine in 2019. In Baltimore, he founded the New Day Campaign, tackling stigma around mental illness and substance use, a body of work for which Michael Bloomberg recognized him as one of 10 national innovators at the 2018 Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington, D.C. This year, Governor Janet Mills presented him the Governor’s Award at Maine’s Opioid Response Summit for Studio B’s 2024 19 Towns, 19 Stories. This past summer, Studio B launched the Puddle Dock Village Festival, an innovative month-long series of exhibitions and programs addressing community wellbeing.

New Day Campaign
Puddle Dock Village Festival
Studio B
Bruun Studios

Meriah Hope

Topic: Creative Aging Maine

Meriah Hope is the Age Equity Program Manager at the Maine Council on Aging. She joined the Maine Council on Aging in January 2025 as an Age Equity Program Manager. She began her career in the world of Interfaith Volunteer Caregiving and quickly found that helping older adults live their best lives was “heart work” for her. Meriah worked in that world in small rural programs, then at the state and national level, helping the movement transition from its roots with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation into an independent national organization. A special interest in memory care led her to develop a volunteer training program for individuals providing respite to caregivers of loved ones with dementia. She then spent years with the primary title of “Mom,” while teaching dance, doing motivational coaching, and flower farming. When Meriah began to learn about ageism through the Maine Council on Aging, she found the intersection of her previous work with older adults and her passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion. As an Age Equity Program Manager, she currently works as Lead Facilitator for the Maine Council on Aging’s Leadership Exchange on Ageism, heads the Creative Aging project in partnership with the Maine Arts Commission, and leads the Age-Positive Workforce Initiative. Meriah holds a degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of South Dakota.

www.mainecouncilonaging.org

Lee Klarman

Topic: Social Prescribing

As Director, Community Resiliency at United Way of Southern Maine, Lee Klarman is dedicated to helping individuals and families thrive during and beyond times of crisis. With more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Lee leads collaborative efforts to ensure that community members with the least access to resources can connect to the care and support they need. Within this framework, United Way of Southern Maine is working to bring a social prescription program to Maine. He holds a degree in Visual Arts and maintains a lifelong passion for artistic creation.

www.uwsme.org

Phil Wormuth

Topic: Arts in Corrections: The Transformative Power of Creative Self Expression

Phil Wormuth is a 28-year public school educator, fellow of the Maine Writing Project, editor of Maine Short, Short Stories by “Just Ned” McInnis, and author of Venus Remembered and Other Poems. Wormuth collaborated with the band BipTunia, contributing lyrics and performing spoken word on 30 commercially available albums. He has been a member of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, since 2017. Wormuth’s work in corrections over the course of more than 20 years resulted in the publication of Inside Out: Art and Writing by Residents of the Hancock County Jail.

Read the News Center Maine article

Lisa Kuzma

Topic: Transitional Youth Artist Mentorship

Lisa Kuzma spent the first 20 years of her professional life working in commercial banking in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a lender and ultimately running the credit training program for Mellon Bank, at that time the largest bank in the city. Through her tenure at Deloitte and the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University, Lisa developed consulting skills and shifted her financial focus to the nonprofit sector. After collaborating with foundations in Pittsburgh to support their nonprofit grantees, Lisa ultimately joined the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the largest foundation in Pittsburgh. While focusing primarily on human services and economic development, Lisa supported the Foundation’s significant conservation work by providing financial expertise when necessary. Lisa retired in September 2024 from Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services, where she developed data analytic tools to provide leadership with real-time financial dashboards to inform investment decisions. Lisa also has experience teaching finance for nonprofits in graduate, undergraduate, and community settings.

Lisa moved to Maine in 2022 after the death of her son Zack earlier that year and is spending her retirement supporting the nonprofit community here, including an effort called Zack Twenty-Five, which created a partnership between the arts and human service communities to provide meaningful mentorships for transition-aged youth as they exit the foster care system.

Cave

Topic: YLAT Ambassador

Cave is a first-generation college student studying Health Sciences at Central Maine Community College and working toward a future career in nursing. He serves as a YLAT Ambassador, using his leadership to help uplift youth voices and support positive changes across the community. Cave loves skateboarding and learning new skills because they have empowered him to push through tough moments. His biggest motivation comes from the people he meets on his journey and the chance to make them feel supported, welcomed, and heard.

Kate Beever & Gray Baldwin

Topic: Maine Music Therapy Association

Kate Beever is an experienced and professional advocate for access to arts and healthcare. Her business, Maine Music & Health, was founded in 2011 and has won awards from the SBA and Inc. Magazine. She works as a music therapist in pediatric palliative care and adult neuro rehab. Beever created the Creative Health Conference and co-founded Expressive Wellness Trainings; both endeavors build relationships between arts and health professionals. She is a fellow in the National Arts Strategies’ Creative Communities. Beever is also a performing percussionist, having toured and recorded internationally.

Maine Music & Health, LLC

Arts & Health

October 24, 2025 | 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Watch the recording: The session recording is available below.