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The
mission of the Art Angels Healing Arts Program is to use art as a tool
to promote individual and social health awareness to support groups,
healthcare facilities and schools. Healing arts therapy is a creative
approach to the therapeutic process where verbal/non-verbal
communication takes place through the creative process.
In
modern society the gap between art and healing is slowly being closed
through the efforts of arts -in- medicine or healing arts programs
throughout the world. Art
Angels is a healing arts program that seeks to bring these two
disciplines together.
By working with communities to strengthen our
environments, we feel it is critical to educate children about the
importance of health throughout the use of art.
Art Angels challenges participants to use their imagination along
with a variety of materials and tools to express personal ideas,
thoughts and feelings.
Having practiced 13 years as a registered dental
hygienist has given Art Angels Program Director, Rhonda Radford-Adams,
the vision and experience to forward the mission of the program and an
innovative community Art-In-Dentistry performance, entitled, Tickle's
Traveling Toothbrush Show.
Project Summary
Tickle's
Traveling Toothbrush Show is a traveling exhibit featuring expressive
Art-In-Dentistry projects delivered on-site to
elementary schools, community centers and health fairs to promote
children's dental health education for grades K through 8. This community art-in-dentistry project is based on a
cast of characters created from 'dental office personalities'.
Tickles The Toothbrush is the star of the show and he is joined
by Dr. Diggles
the Dentist, Happy Hygienist,
Flossy Floss and Sticky- Icky -Plaque and The Sugar Bug Gang.
These characters creatively present dental health lessons
combining different art mediums such as performing arts using song,
dance, interactive role-play; and hands-on art projects using items and
materials commonly associated with the dental office.
Tickle's
Traveling Toothbrush Show
is a community outreach project
that enables children and their caregivers to understand the importance
of good dental health and the consequences of neglect. The exhibits
interactive lessons are based on a dental health curriculum series
developed by a team of pediatric dental professionals and professional
artists. The healing art
activities have been especially designed for working with children
suffering from anxiety, depression and fear of dental visits.
The facilitators that will accompany the traveling exhibit are
dental school/dental hygiene students as well as registered dental
professionals with over 20 years of professional experience in both
community dentistry and healing art techniques adopted in health care
facilities throughout the world.
Need
Dental studies have shown that by the age of 6, our
children will have experienced some form of tooth decay, and by the age
of 15, some will have experienced gum disease.
Poor personal dental hygiene and infrequent dental visits due to
lack of affordability present major obstacles to reducing these
problems. Most people take good dental health for granted and do not
realize how important it is until it's too late.
Without teeth, we would be unable to utilize functions such as
speaking clearly, properly chewing and of course just looking feeling
great. Recent studies
conducted have also proven that dental disease is not only restricted to
the mouth, but can also have a negative impact on the circulatory,
respiratory, muscular, skeletal and immune systems of the body.
Purpose
The
subject of oral health education once took precedence in our educational
system. Over time, this subject has been put aside and taken lightly.
Tickle's
Traveling Toothbrush Show
is an community dental health project developed to teach students
positive oral health habits of basic hygiene, diet and physical activity
that will encourage regular dental visits.
Learning means relating and combining, not separating. Making
sense of the world is much easier for the child who has been helped to
see that new things he/she must learn contain at least fragments of
something he/she already knows.
Art
creates situations for discovering relationships between content areas,
pushing the areas to overlap as they actually do in life.
This brings an excitement to learning for children. The
art-in-dentistry presentations involve students in a fun hands-on
learning process that will enable the art mediums available to us to be
used in new ways to achieve increased dental health awareness while
improving the overall health of children.
Goals
The easy to use learning materials provided in this
project are designed to:
- Help children, parents, teachers and school nurses understand the
importance of dental health prevention and consequences of neglect.
- Teach children positive dental health habits of basic hygiene, diet
and physical activity that will stay with them for a lifetime.
- Promote self-esteem, encouraging children to care themselves and
take responsibility for their own dental health.
- Stimulate dental health awareness to help children recognize and
communicate potential dental health problems to their parents.
- Help prepare children for dental visits by introducing creative
ways to overcome anxiety, depression and fear often associated with
dental visits.
- Provide innovative methods to creatively open dental health
communication between children, parents and health care providers.
- Use
expressive arts as an effective medium to revolutionize children's
dental health education throughout our communities.
dMMethods
Tickle's
Traveling Toothbrush Show
provides:
¨
PerformingArts-In-DentistryWorkshops
(20 minutes)
Live musical show performed by
Tickles
and The Gang as they sing and dance to some of the hottest dental
rap lyrics and hip-hop beats that take children on a cool trip to the
office of Dr. Diggles the Dentist.
¨
Children's
Art-In-Dentistry Workshops (20 minutes)
A series of expressive art
sessions that will use materials and items familiar to the dental office
environment to teach children positive oral health habits of basic
hygiene, diet and physical activity.
Art-In-Dentistry
Training
Workshops(2 hours)
These workshops are designed to train nurses,
teachers, dental professionals and students to the profession of using
art-in-dentistry techniques that can be provided in educational,
clinical and health fair settings. This
workshop series introduces methods to creatively open dental health
communication between children, parents and health care providers. (*pending
CEU's)
¨
Tickle's
Dental Health Education Kits
Each
workshop presentation includes the following
This guide provides instruction for hands-on
art-in-dentistry activities that teachers, parents and school nurses can
use to creatively teach dental health awareness to their children.
Educational music and songs by Tickles
and The Gang
'Learning
To Brush With Tickles'
'Sticky-Icky
Plaque and the Sugar Bug Gang!'
'Old
Teeth, New Teeth'
'Tickle's
Dental Visit'
The
Traveling Art-In-Dentistry Exhibit is ideal for :
-
Schools
-
Community
Centers
-
Health
Fairs
-
Health
Care Facilities
-
Mobile
Health Programs
-
Private
Dental Practice
Schedule
or sponsor a healing art
workshop
today!
Rhonda
Radford Adams, Program Director
713.678.ARTS
(2787)
artangels@mocah.org
Look for
at the John P. McGovern Museum Of Health And Medical Science, located at
1515 Hermann Dr.
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