Snow City Arts Returns to Cook County Health

Snow City Arts returns to Cook County Health with live and virtual programming to engage pediatric patients in arts-learning opportunities.

Two full days each week, pediatric patients at Cook County Health will be able to engage with a Snow City Arts (SCA) Teaching Artist to explore their ideas, create new works of art, and express their creativity all while learning. SCA’s offerings will initially feature visual arts and music providing young learners with opportunities to draw, paint, sculpt, photograph, play the ukulele, drum, make digital beats, and learn sound mixing.

SCA provided art programming at Cook County Health (CCH)’s John H. Stroger Jr., Hospital from 2003-2018 and is slated to resume offering art experiences to hospitalized pediatric patients this month.

“We are thrilled to welcome Snow City Arts back to Cook County Health,” said CCH Chief Experience Officer Linh Dang. “Offering arts programming to our youngest patients goes a long way in improving their hospital stay and, most importantly, their overall wellbeing. We know that engaging in art projects helps reduce a patient’s stress and perception of pain, as well as improves their mood—all things that support health and healing.”

“Cook County Health was the first place I worked for Snow City Arts and, in many ways, it will always be my favorite. I have very fond memories of the Idea Lab there. We’d get kids of all different ages working together on a project. It was common for workshops to go for hours, seamlessly moving from one artform to another with a room full of laughter. It felt joyous and collaborative. I keep those projects from my Cook County Health days close to the heart,” said SCA Teaching Artist turned Program Director Dan Kerr-Hobert.

SCA has been ahead of the curve adapting to virtual tools and content for HIPAA-compliant program delivery to students in Chicagoland pediatric hospitals. Since 2020, virtual programming has allowed SCA the opportunity to continue offering arts learning experiences to students in the hospital when they are not able to engage with in person learning for a variety of reasons. SCA will employ virtual tools at CCH ensuring that all interested children can participate with a Teaching Artist and even with other patients, regardless of their diagnosis or isolation status. Snow City Arts was awarded funding via the Carl & Marilyn Thoma Foundation and Innovation80 to conduct this programming.

“All of us at Snow City Arts are so pleased to be returning to work with the Pediatric population at Cook County Health. Our Teaching Artists bring our expertise in providing live, one-on-one arts learning opportunities as well as being able to leverage the virtual tools we’ve developed over the last two years to ensure we can reach young people who may be isolated due to a diagnosis.,” said Executive Director Carrie Spitler.