The Healthy Village

OHIO’s Immersive Healthcare Theater

The Healthy Village is an interdisciplinary program supporting the production of theater, visual and audio storytelling, and other arts-based projects to help artists and health care professionals develop social skills in real-time problem solving, communication, and advocacy toward community wellbeing.

The Healthy Village is founded on the idea that professionals in Theater and Healthcare have a lot to teach each other about:

•   The transformational power of storytelling
•   Bearing witness to the challenges and triumphs of the human condition
•   Holding space for ambiguity, empathy, and reflection

College Partners

150

Students Engaged

New Undergraduate Courses

$143,500

Funding Awarded

The Healthy Village applies techniques from theater to train students in OHIO’s College of Health Sciences and Professions and Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.

As a result, health care professionals enhance their clinical training with arts-based methods for improving patient advocacy, interprofessional teamwork, and communication.

Learn more about the program’s components below!

Classes

The program offers two classes for undergrads enrolled in health-related majors. IHS 2820: Inter-professional Healthcare through Creative Arts focuses on effective teamwork. THAR 2150: Performing Patient Care focuses on communication and patient advocacy. Both courses use exercises in improvisation, active listening, and scene work to help students develop human-centered, social competencies.

Workshops

The program partners with other OHIO resources, including the Kennedy Museum of Art, the Office of Rural and Underserved Programs, and the Game Research and Immersive Design Lab, to develop workshops for graduate students and continuing-ed professionals. Workshops focus on skill-building exercises in the areas of visual thinking, collaborative processing, bodily awareness, and empathy building.

Stories

The program commissions new creative work that amplifies the stories of rural and medically underserved communities. We are committed to community-driven storytelling, racial and social equity, and narrative experimentation across genres. As part of our experiential, immersive approach to learning, newly created works of fiction and nonfiction are incorporated into Healthy Village courses and workshops.

Project Leaders

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