Today, we’d like to introduce you to Shay Thornton Kulha. Shay was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Marlo Saucedo.
Hi Shay, we’re so thrilled to have you sharing your story with us today. Maybe we can kick things off by having you introduce yourself to our readers? We’d love to have you go into your story and how you got to where you are today.
Thanks! My pleasure! I’m a native Houstonian, who after a decade in the Midwest and on the West Coast, came back home to a city that had changed dramatically. As a theatre artist turned arts administrator, my passion has always been in community driven projects. Houston’s unique position as a robust cultural center and the home to the world’s largest medical center lends itself to being a bridge between these two communities. When I first learned about the Center for Performing Arts Medicine at Houston Methodist, I felt called to its mission. At CPAM our goal is to translate the power of the arts into the healthcare environment – which spoke to me, in thinking about how transformational the arts can be to a patient, family member, or provider’s experience in healthcare. Healthcare can be a stressful environment, but I believe through providing arts opportunities for all of the individuals who walk through our doors, we can create a healing environment that supports both the physical body and soul. Marlo is an artist who shares our vision on communities coming together through the arts. In early 2021 CPAM wanted to create an interactive art experience for our employees to commemorate the one year anniversary of caring for COVID patients. We have had the pleasure to work with Marlo previously and as our thinking evolved it became apparent that her unique style of work would highlight how all of our 26,000 employees came together throughout the pandemic. Her partnership took our desire to create an artistic time capsule of Houston Methodist’s response to COVID-19 and made that happen!
We’ve heard great things about your organization. For our readers who might not be as familiar, can you please tell them about the organization?
CPAM is a fully integrated arts in health department in the Houston Methodist hospital system- almost like the hospital’s very own arts organization. We work in four main areas: specialized artist health care and wellness education, meaningful integration of the performing and visual arts into the hospital environment, creative arts therapy that utilizes the arts in clinical patient care, and research that harnesses the broadest potential of the arts in therapy, rehabilitation and human performance. The last year in particular, we have further concentrated efforts on employee arts enrichment or reflective arts activities to support our staff at the hospital. Since we are in the hospital, imbedded as part of the organization, CPAM hears the pulse of the needs of staff and we have the opportunity to create programming in response to those needs. From our incredible music therapy team providing environmental music therapy at nursing stations to collaborating with Spiritual Care on Serenity Rooms for clinical staff or even working with arts partners like Inprint or the Museum of Fine Arts Houston to curate unique experiences, we are able to use the arts to support our staff both here in the hospital and those working from home.
As you know, we’re big fans of Marlo Saucedo and we know you’ve worked with her quite a bit as well. We’d love to hear about your experience working with Marlo.
You are not alone; we are big fans of Marlo’s over here. She took our dream of a collaborative art piece and made it accessible, beautiful, and a time capsule of caring for our community through COVID-19. In essence, “Writing Our History” is an interactive art piece created by Houston Methodist employees marking the one-year anniversary of caring for our community throughout COVID-19. The piece she designed is composed of individually signed names by employees at Houston Methodist. We gave the prompt of ‘who left a mark on you this past year’ and asked employees to fill in the open canvas with what that was. At first glance you see silhouettes of healthcare workers, but upon closer inspection each figure is made up of the names of those who left a mark this past year. What I love about it is that no one individually could have done what the hospital system did this past year, but by working together we made a lasting impact. It really is a tribute to coming together and being stronger at the other side.
Across the hospital system, employees shared their name or the name of someone else with pride. Watching employees line up to sign there were elbow-fives with people saying ‘YES WE DID DO IT’. There were meaningful moments where individuals with teary eyes hovered a few extra seconds above the name they wrote. There were also celebrations; I remember one woman sharing this was her last day at the hospital after decades of service and how she was always going to be a part of the history with her name on the wall! Overall the canvas signing felt like a signal of respect for where we had been and a moment to look forward to where we are going. Now that the pieces are going on the wall (one at each hospital campus), it is fun to see employees find what they wrote.
Marlo took our goal alongside our laundry list of needs (like creating 8 similar but different pieces and making it easy for employees to sign on their way in or out) and created something that feels accessible and elevated. She saw the vision and was the one who formulated a piece that we will treasure for a long time to come.
Website: www.houstonmethodist.org/cpam
