Resources and Creative Opportunities

The VetArtSpan/ArtThread Interactive Gallery is the place for you to make and share art online. The Gallery and the integrated art-making tool Splash! offers an innovative and inspirational environment where you create art online, post your work, and weave a thread of shared art with your fellow veterans, your community, and your family. Think of the Gallery as a no-fail environment that nurtures creative expression and enables an art-to-art conversation.

The Straz Center/ArtThead Gallery showcases the work of  families at the MacDill Air Force Base. Children of active duty parents did amazing art here as part of a summer program from the Straz Center.

The USF Contemporary Art Museum, part of the Institute for Research in Art in the College of The Arts, offers Breaking Barriers, an intensive five-week online photography workshop for military veterans.

Breaking Barriers will give veterans the opportunity to have a voice through art-making, and interface and integrate with both the local civilian and larger veteran communities.

The workshop, held online, will meet Fridays, 1–5 pm, July 10 – August 7, 2020. Breaking Barriers is free to veterans, and no previous experience is required.

For more information or to register: Email Leslie Elsasser at lelsasse@usf.edu. Registration is due by Monday, July 6. Learn more!

The Morean Arts Center partners with James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital to Offer Glassblowing to Military Patients and Veterans as part of a community-based arts program. The inception of Operation: Art of Valor began at the Morean Glass Studio & Hot Shop March 18, 2018, with a mission to serve the military and veteran population through structured, hands-on learning that focuses on improving cognition, social interaction, physical dexterity, teamwork and confidence.

Art2Action has developed a robust Veteran Arts Program in Tampa, FL. It began in 2013, supporting the development of Speed Killed My Cousin, a play by Linda Parris-Bailey. Since then, they have offered weekly performing arts workshops at the Psychosocial Rehabilitation & Recovery Center (PRRC) of the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital. They also host a monthly Veterans Community Open Mic, featuring local and national guest artists presented by Art2Action.

Part of TheatreWorks Florida’s acclaimed community outreach program, THEATRECARES, Vet Voices provides disabled military war veterans an opportunity for positive self-awareness and self-discovery in a creative “safe space” environment. This ongoing “arts and health” program will nurture life-long healing and learning through the art of live theatre. The program will consist of workshops and events that allow veterans affected by war to explore the theatre arts and ultimately find healing through creativity. The end result will combine theatre professionals with veterans on stage in a fully produced, original musical play, developed by the veterans themselves, that incorporates creative writing, music, songs and visual art generated from the workshops.

The UF Center for Arts in Medicine co-developed the Rural Veterans Telerehabilitation Initiative, a creative arts therapy initiative in partnership with the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center. In addition, UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine partners with Malcom Randall VA Medical Center to provide Arts in Health for Veterans, a bi-monthly arts workshops to inpatients on the psychiatry unit. Veteran artists meet bi-weekly at the UF Wilmot Gardens to create art inspired by the natural world.