The COVID-19 outbreak is affecting our work and personal communities. Snow City Arts (SCA), always concerned for the health and wellbeing of children and youth who are medically vulnerable, is acutely aware of COVID-19’s impact and the further isolation it brings to our students as our hospital partners respond. Working in collaboration with each of our hospital partners, SCA will be suspending on-site hospital programming for the next two weeks at which point we will reassess.
Snow City Arts Office Remains Active Remotely
SCA Administrative and Arts Administrative teams remain active full time remotely. We are well equipped to function at full capacity as a distributed workforce and will conduct meetings via phone and digital meeting platforms as we are committed to a practice of social distancing in all arenas of work for the next two weeks. No one on our staff has been diagnosed with COVID-19. We will monitor the situation closely and will make determinations daily on how to best protect those we serve, our community partners, and our entire team.
Snow City Arts Teaching Artists Working Remotely
For the next two weeks, our 10 dedicated Teaching Artists will continue working off-site under the guidance of our Program Director and with the support of our Program Manager, directing their full capacity on innovative curriculum design, virtual curation, and spearheading efforts to engage our students with digital arts education resources and lively communication on our social engagement platforms. As these platforms are public, SCA’s thought leadership and online resources in arts education will be available to other children and youth who may be out of school, quarantined, or otherwise isolated.
Precautions
SCA will be strictly reinforcing our wellness policy for all part and full-time employees. Though already working remotely, we have asked if they show any signs of illness to ensure that we remain in compliance with the protocols set in place by our hospital partners.
Planning
Our governing board and leadership team continue to plan for short and long-term scenarios and impact on our work, and how to best advance our mission to bring instruction in the visual arts, creative writing, music, dance, theater and media arts to children and youth at Rush University Children’s Hospital, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Children’s Hospital University of Illinois, and Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital. We are already actively using this time away from the hospital floors to amplify the 22 years of experience SCA has amassed and to innovate new ways to provide arts education, social connectivity and a sense of empowerment to those most vulnerable to the isolation and fear that can be brought about by health challenges, our students in the hospital.
Compassion, Creativity, Learning and Healing
SCA’s mission is founded on the premise and 22 years of experience that leveraging curiosity and creativity through the arts in times of health-related isolation is one of the most empowering and healing experiences a person can have. We encourage you all to draw, paint, sing, dance, write, and use those apps and devices to make media you can share while we all practice social distancing to keep ourselves and each safe.
Viruses are no one’s fault. Mindfulness and compassion are gifts we can share in many ways during times of uncertainty, as we care for each other in new ways during this time.
The decisions SCA has been making, though creating substantial changes in the logistics of our programming, have been made with care and compassion as we respond as responsible members of a number of vulnerable local communities and a global society working together to slow the spread of this virus.
We will continue to keep you updated with the latest posted here on the blog. If you have any immediate questions, please direct them to info@snowcityarts.org and we will do our best to get back to you quickly.
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