Crocker Together: Working Toward Wellness in Community

This year, Art + Wellness celebrates ten years at the Crocker Art Museum. If the last ten years have taught us anything in this realm, it is that evolution is key. Although Art Rx—the program that started it all with a slow-looking art experience designed for visitors who self-identify as suffering from chronic pain and their caregivers—remains and continues to grow, the Art + Wellness series itself looks much different than it did in 2014. It’s larger, more frequent, and more diverse programmatically, and it now engages a wide-range of audiences from toddlers to those creatively aging.

A number of milestones stand out as key in the evolution of this program, namely a partnership with Dr. Ian Koebner, then of the UC Davis Institute of Pain Management, to research the physical, mental, and emotional effects of an experience with art on chronic pain, the introduction of Artful Meditation and later Sound Healing Yoga as part of a 2018 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. But, perhaps the most important milestone of all for this suite of programs was the development and implementation of the Crocker Together project, generously funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

As we ended this three-year, multi-program project in June of 2024, it was clear how it had radically altered both the format and ethos of Art + Wellness at the Crocker, and how it would provide a model for a new way of approaching public programs at the Museum that marry an art experience with a wellness experience both onsite and at community partner venues.

Back in 2021, after a year of sheltering in place during the pandemic and exploring a variety of live and asynchronous virtual program formats, the Crocker’s education department began discussing how to evolve this suite of programs to better serve audiences that were desperate for moments of social interaction and opportunities to combat social isolation.

For the 2020 Museum and Computer Network Conference’s publication, What’s Emerging in the Field?, I wrote a paper titled A Theoretical Proposition for Art + Wellness in the Virtual Realm, that explored the ways in which we could transition our in-person experiences to a virtual portal that allowed visitors sheltering in place to be able to connect with each other, bring the Museum into their homes to meet them where they were at, and explore how wellness could operate through the Crocker’s collection beyond its walls. Despite being only a theoretical proposition, it became the architecture for a revamp of the format of and philosophy behind these programs.

We set forward with a goal to transform the programs and intention of Art + Wellness at the Crocker to allow the Museum to serve as an alternative space for wellness and mindfulness that was separate from a typical yoga studio or meditation sangha. The team conducted an in-depth evaluation of our existing and potential audiences and identified feasible and dream areas for growth and evolution outside of the standard museum education outreach programs. This process made clear the need for Crocker staff, museum patrons, and community organizations to “come together” to reimagine what these programs could be.

Three years later, we’ve now worked with six community partners including, the Yolo Food Bank, Sacramento and Citrus Heights Vet Center, Chill Sacramento, Women’s Wisdom ART, Roberts Family Development Center, and Pro Youth and Families to conduct focus groups that have informed structural and educational changes within our Art + Wellness programs as well as those in our Youth + Family program area that share a connection-building focus and intent. This research also resulted in several offsite programs developed in collaboration with these partners to allow us to better understand how to work with their audiences in meaningful ways. At the Crocker, we’ve hosted over one hundred and twenty programs, four of which are brand new—Mindful Movement, Artmaking, Expressive Writing, and Art Connects. Three long-running favorites, Meditation, Yoga, and Sound Healing, have evolved into their own stand-alone programs, with deeper connections to themes, ideas, and patterns visible in the Crocker’s collection. We’ve worked with nine program facilitators to bring Art + Wellness programs to life both at the Museum and in the community and to serve kids and families here in the galleries through Baby Loves Art, Art Connects, and Artful Tot. Most recently, we have relaunched Meet Me at the Museum—a slow-looking tour program for visitors with memory care issues like those with Alzheimer’s or Dementia.

Through all these programs and project phases we’ve served more than 4,300 visitors and participated in programs across the city of Sacramento.

The implementation of Crocker Together occurred in three distinct project phases. The first phase focused on information gathering as we gathered feedback from community partners to help re-evaluate our existing programs and identify areas for growth. Phase two included the rollout of Art + Soul Sundays—a new moniker to encourage visitors to spend their self-care Sundays at the Crocker. The third phase centered on evaluation, iteration, and documentation.

Facilitator and super-user interviews and surveys will inform future evolutions of wellness programming including the immediate launch of new onsite programs as well as pilots of offsite community partner programs. We also developed a set of resources to share with museums and museum education colleagues across the country on developing and implementing these types of mindfully oriented programs.

Crocker Together programming culminated on Sunday, April 21st with Art + Soul Sundaze, a first-of-its-kind day of wellness for the Museum. During Art + Soul Sundaze, more than 300 attendees enjoyed a suite of Art + Wellness experiences throughout the Museum. This program so clearly illustrated the impact that cultural institutions, our staff, and programming choices can have in bringing people together and connecting them with art, ideas, each other, and the world around them.

This type of experience was precisely the goal when we embarked on this project three years ago. Now, with many lessons learned and wonderful moments enjoyed both here and beyond our Museum walls, Art + Wellness will consistently evolve but will continue to be informed by the ethos and spirit of Crocker Together.

Houghton Kinsman
Education Manager, Crocker Art Museum

Crocker Together is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.