VFTS 2021 11 | Angel Duncan, Juliet King, Wendy Miller, Berna Huebner, Dan Cohen | Advocacy for the Arts as Medicine for the Aging Brain

FEATURED GUESTS:

Angel C. Duncan has an extensive background in counseling psychology, art therapy and Alzheimer’s disease clinical research trials. She comes from the San Francisco Bay Area working with Stanford University, the University of California- San Francisco and the Alzheimer’s Association. In the northeast coastal region, Angel developed wellness support programs and secured large grants for homelessness and seniors living in isolation. In Florida, she was the Research Associate and Director of Education at the Neuropsychiatric Research Center of Southwest Florida. Currently, Angel is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Tampa, she guest teaches and consults for diverse leading organizations and academic institutions in brain health initiatives across the country including the U.K., France and Southeast Asia. She co-developed Arts in Mind, a young-onset and early stage Alzheimer’s program at the Yale University Art Gallery and resides on the Medical Advisory Board for Lorenzo’s House. Angel serves as the Executive Arts Director for the Cognitive Dynamics Foundation and speaks globally on neurocognitive disease and the importance of creativity on the brain. She is a widely published author and is a Peer Reviewer for Frontiers in Psychology and the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Angel founded and hosts the podcast, N2CreativeAging on Spotify and other platforms for aging empowerment. 

Berna G. Huebner is Co-Director and Associate Producer of the film, I Remember Better When I Paint- she is also the editor of the book by the same title. Berna is President and Founder of the Hilgos Foundation, which supports and encourages the ongoing process of artistic creation with people who have different forms of dementia including Alzheimer’s. Berna also serves on the Board of Directors of Arts & Minds, Advisory Council of See Me program at the Smithsonian museums and a director of the Center for the Study of International Communications in Paris. She is the former Research Director for Nelson Rockefeller when he was a Governor of New York and then Vice President.

Dan Cohen, MSW, founder and CEO of Right to Music, advocates integrating best practice music systems into healthcare and promoting the power of music. He founded Music & Memory, a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of personalized music to improve the lives of the elderly. The therapeutic outcomes of his work are portrayed in the documentary, "Alive Inside,” which won the 2014 Sundance Audience Award. He has trained more than 20,000 professionals in 5,000 long-term care homes, hospitals, hospices, and home care programs across North America, Europe, and Australia. 

Juliet King MA, ATR-BC, LPC, LMHC is an Associate Professor of Art Therapy at The George Washington University and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Professor King received her MA in Art Therapy from Hahnemann/Drexel University and has two decades as a clinician, administrator and educator. She developed and implemented the graduate Art Therapy program at Herron School of Art and Design at IUPUI, Indianapolis, IN  and spearheaded the development of over 30 student internships in Indianapolis and surrounding areas. She also developed and continues to oversee the first Art Therapy in Neuroscience and Medicine program at the Indiana University Neuroscience Center. Professor King’s research explores the systematic integration of art therapy and neuroscience with a particular focus on Mobile Brain-Body Imaging (MoBI) to understand and measure the mechanisms of change in the therapeutic process. In 2016 she wrote and edited a textbook titled Art therapy, Trauma and Neuroscience: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives, and plans for the second edition are in motion. Currently Prof King is working on the dissertation for her PhD in Translational Health Sciences with a focus on the cognitive neuroscience of neuroaesthetics and art therapy.

Wendy Miller, Ph.D. ATR-BC, LCPAT, REAT, LPC, BCPC is an expressive arts therapist, writer, sculptor, and educator. She taught for over fifteen years in various universities throughout the country, including JFK University, San Francisco State University, Southwestern College, Lesley College, California Institute of Integral Studies, and The George Washington University. She is the co-founder of Create Therapy Institute, which offers clinical services in arts-based psychotherapy and trainings in the expressive arts. She is a founding member, and first elected (past) executive co-chair of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, where she continues to be on their Advisory Council. She is also an Advisory Board Member of the Peter Alfond Prevention & Healthy Living Center at MaineGeneral Health. She continues the legacy of her late husband’s work, pioneer of creative aging, Gene Cohen, and his Washington DC Center on Aging, where she works on projects in intergenerational communication. www.dccenteronaging.com
Miller’s skills take her into the worlds of fine art, writing, psychology, expressive arts therapy and mind-body medicine. She has published on medical illness and the arts as complementary medicine, the use of sand tray therapy with internationally adopted children, experiential approaches to supervision in expressive arts therapy, and on the cultural responsibility of the arts in therapy. She continues to research the relationships among the arts, creativity and health, particularly in her book which draws from the writing she and her late husband, Gene Cohen did together, entitled: Sky Above Clouds: Finding our way through creativity, aging and illness, released in March 2016 from Oxford University Press. www.sky-above-clouds.com

LISTEN & LEARN:

• Strong rationale for advocating for inclusion of the arts in health care and aging through research. 
• Why research is needed to generate funding for policy change. 
• A call for increased interdisciplinary collaborations. 
• Use of documentary films to reach a larger audience and expand awareness to the use of creative modalities with elders experiencing neurocognitive impairments. 

RESOURCES MENTIONED ON THE SHOW
Angel Duncan - https://duncanangel.wixsite.com/angelcduncan/untitled
aduncan@ut.edu

Berna Huebner - www.irememberbetterwhenipaint.com 
Hilgos Foundation - www.hilgos.org 

Dan Cohen - www.righttomusic.com 

Juliet King - kingjule@gw.edu 
https://arttherapy.columbian.gwu.edu/ 

Wendy Miller - www.drwendymiller.com 
www.sky-above-clouds.com