Harvest’s Healing Arts programs use the power of music, art media and the creative spirit to open hearts and support developmental growth, healing and wholeness.
Participants in the Healing Arts explore their Wholeness Journey through non-verbal modalities that help tap the subconscious. Guided creative expression can help surface powerful feelings, unblock and reconcile emotional conflicts, cultivate self-awareness and mindfulness, better cope with illness or life changes and reduce anxiety and increase self-esteem.
No artistic or musical experience is required to participate in our Healing Arts programs. The experience is not about the artistic quality of the work but rather about exploring associations between the artistic choices made and the participant’s individual Wholeness Journey.
Our Offerings
Meeting Our Healing Artists
Samite
Samite Mulondo, a war refugee from Uganda and founder of Musicians for World Harmony (MWH), is world-renowned as a musician, composer and humanitarian who for decades has used the healing power of music engagement to rehabilitate child soldiers in Africa and enrich the lives of older adults and persons living with dementia. Samite was featured in the Sundance award winning documentary Alive Inside, a Story of Music and Memory, and co-created and starred in the musical theater production Disrupt Dementia, produced and directed by Harvest founder Kavan Peterson.
During the COVID-19 pandemic Samite collaborated with Harvest to adapt his M.U.S.I.C. Heals program for virtual delivery to homebound elders, caregivers and community partners. With support from a grant by MWH, Samite serves as Musician-in-Residence in the Harvest Wholeness Center’s Healing Arts. Click here to learn about grant-funded opportunities for people living with dementia to work one-on-one with Samite.
Kaley Burke
In her artist journey, Kaley Burke discovered the healing power of creative arts to find mental balance and overcome profound loss. Recognizing that art was a powerful means of coping with and exploring anxiety and depression, Kaley’s artistic journey evolved through different materials, mediums and personal struggles, into the creation of the Healing Art Emerge process.
Kaley’s artistic passion is also informed by her professional career and experiences in elder care. Her deep curiosity of human behavior and relationships attracted her to a career working with older adults. Beginning her career in nursing home administration, Kaley witnessed firsthand the struggles of older adults who are too often stripped of autonomy and dehumanized by a medicalized long term care system. This led Kaley to co-found Harvest Home Care in 2014 with the mission to help older adults thrive in their homes and avoid being forced into institutional care.
Harvest created an opportunity for Kaley to work intimately with families through their most difficult challenges, including coping with Alzheimer’s disease, prolonged end-of-life care and death. As difficult as these challenges were, she found they greatly influenced her artist expression and exploration in surprising, strength-giving ways. Kaley began sharing her artistic insights with Harvest clients and families through informal art workshops designed to help participants surface and process emotions in non-verbal, creative ways.
After the death of her father from cancer in 2020, Kaley poured her grief into creative expression and began developing the Art Emerge process as the first offering in the Harvest Wholeness Center’s Healing Arts programs. A meditative process, Art Emerge combines guided contemplative practices, soothing music and freestyle exploration of different art mediums. The experience invites participant’s to allow their authentic self to emerge and explore emotional processing through creative expression.