Advocates in Wyoming trying to get music therapy licensure recognized in the state are hitting roadblocks.
Members of the Wyoming Music Therapy Task Force fielded questions last week from the state's Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee. Music therapy can help relieve anxiety, dementia and stroke symptoms, as well as aid people living with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
Hilary Camino, chair of the Wyoming Music Therapy Task Force, told the committee she wants music to to be a protected title to increase access and so that practitioner qualifications are clear.
"We often work with vulnerable populations, people who cannot advocate for themselves. So it is very important that we know what we're doing when working with those very vulnerable populations in a clinical setting, " she said.
Camino, who is a practitioner herself, said she is given up to three referrals per week to provide music therapy services in a hospital setting and that there aren't enough providers to fulfill the need.
The committee asked questions about what kind of training practitioners need, what kind of funding licensure would require and under what state statute licensure would fall, before moving forward a bill draft for title protection.
Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, supported the idea of licensure and also noted the idea moves what he says is "against the tide" of the current Legislature.
"The sense that I get from our colleagues, especially with some of the new groups out there, are the work is to lessen licensing across the field. I think that is going to be kind of a strong issue in the 2025 session," he explained.
Seventeen other states have enacted music therapy legislation and similar bills have been brought to other legislatures.
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By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
Search "St. Croix River Valley" online and you'll find competition for your current desktop background.
The waterway is a government-designated National Wild and Scenic River, with all its blues and picture-perfect hues. Scenic is an understatement. Living in the dual-state area, which is 30-some miles northeast of Minnesota's Twin Cities, is an artist colony of sorts (how could you not be artistically inspired by the views?).
Local arts organization ArtReach St. Croix is helping to connect them.
Art to Art
"Artists often work in isolation, especially in the semi-rural and rural space," says Heather Rutledge, ArtReach's executive director. "In the St. Croix Valley, the artists are not parading down the street, but one of the ways that we [connect them] is network building among the artists."
Spanning the final 60 miles of the lower St. Croix River in Wisconsin and Minnesota, ArtReach has identified 168 local creatives on its directory.
Beyond the interactive list, the Stillwater-based nonprofit heads a mobile art gallery (which often sets up in nearby state parks), an area arts event calendar, and shares artist resources for folks in the region. ArtReach also hosts art at its gallery and month-long NEA Big Read programs. The list truly goes on.
Distinct Community, Place
ArtReach's slogan is "art at every bend in the river"-and it means it.
"The artists are building these bridges across the river, and see this geography as meaningful. And these programs that ArtReach does reinforce that," Rutledge says.
Harnessing multiple counties, small towns, villages-and two states-into a connected art community is special, she says, especially considering the area's unique suburban-skirt flavor.
"[We're] in this liminal space between the metro and fully outstate rural spaces," Rutledge says.
"When I moved here, I thought how incredible it was to be in a space that's very close to the metro and yet a world away," she says. "The other day I moved an exhibition from the Somerset Library to the Osceola Library, and then I came back to Stillwater. And on that little loop, I saw three different bald eagles."
She says the area sees a big economic impact from the arts, too-measuring nearly $170 million in historic total and employing over 2,000 people in the valley in one year, according to a 2022 Americans for the Arts report.
Rutledge and the ArtReach team continue fostering what they love best (hint: it's art!). They continually work with local tourism departments and the National Park Service to set up programming. And "Poets of Place," the next mobile art gallery, is set for this summer.
Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
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By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Greater Dakota News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
For nearly two decades, Rachel Olivia Berg has created large-scale artworks for companies. Think hotel lobbies or resort hallways.
Though undoubtedly aesthetic, the works felt impersonal, branded, commercial.
“You’re telling other people’s stories,” the artist says. In 2023, she moved away from projects like those and focused on stories and communities important to her. So when Berg, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, heard of a Rapid City, South Dakota, tribal health center looking for art, she dove in.
Oyate Health Center
The project’s arts selection committee received maybe half a dozen proposals from Berg—as well as submissions from dozens of creatives across the region.
What’s now a clinic-wide, permanent collection with over 100 pieces was two years in the making, from the open call to installation process.
All the selected (and compensated) art pieces focus on culture-specific healing, made by 50-some enrolled tribal citizens from the Great Plains area, from professional artists to community creatives.
“[We] really focused on those visuals of healing and how we as Native people dissect that word—healing spiritual health as well as physical and mental health,” says committee member Ashley Pourier, a museum curator and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.
‘Our Own Visual Vocabulary’
The Great Plains Tribal Health Board spearheaded the project.
Taking over management and reconstruction, the former Indian Health Services Center-turned-Oyate Health Center became a brand-new building—with a brand new need for art. But not just any art.
Since the healthcare center is for Native American patients and staff, the art inside needed to be, too. Having Indigenous symbolism about has transformed the space, and what it means to heal inside it.
“It’s important for us, for Indigenous people, to have our own visual vocabulary, to have our own understanding. You can walk into hospitals across the country and there’s frequently flowers or things that are very universal,” Berg says of the more generic art.
“But what’s really nice about Oyate [Health Center] is that we were able to create art from our perspective, things we understand, things we relate to. It helps you feel like it’s your space; it helps you feel that you’re meant to be there.”
The art collection, from photography to paintings to 3D work, touches on spiritual and cultural understanding.
Berg’s piece, Eagle Buffalo Star, is an expansive wall relief artwork. Made of diamond-shaped resin tiles, it’s a lively, almost moving image of a buffalo and eagle connected by a star.
She started with the idea of traditional beadwork and star quilting: Little pieces come together, creating meaning. Its oranges, yellows, browns and blues—colors of the sky and earth in the Black Hills—shine in the center’s new pediatric area.
“The stars … are hopeful and help us to think of the healing aspect of our connection, of how we’re not alone,” Berg says.
There’s a new and meaningful feeling of community in the space. Berg calls the health center a “hub,” thanks to its art from people across her community.
“It’s literally a museum. It’s a collection,” Berg says. “It’s not just a building. It’s our building.”
Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
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The Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston is one of many historic and cultural institutions across the nation to lose access to federal funding.
The Trump administration put the staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the agency that provides funding to libraries and museums, on leave. The museum had submitted a grant proposal for $500,000 for the institute's African American History and Culture program.
Desmond Bertrand-Pitts, CEO of the museum, said although the funds are not available, they will still be there to serve the community.
"Organizations like ours have to work harder to prove our value and our worth but we have good partners like the Kinder Foundation to keep us going," Bertrand-Pitts explained. "They're in support of a Juneteenth Initiative that we have coming up. The federal funding announcement can affect programming, but the museum is still going to live on."
He added federal funding is not used for day-to-day operations but cuts could affect some of its outreach programming with kids and veterans.
In 2023, the museum added more than $2.5 million to the Houston economy. Bertrand-Pitts pointed out although the museum highlights the stories of African Americans in the military, everyone can learn from the exhibits. He argued recent Trump administration attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion make their work even more important.
"We are American history," Bertrand-Pitts asserted. "There are so many freedoms that we now enjoy that would have not been possible had it not been for the United States Colored Troops, and for the Buffalo Soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen, all of the men and women that came after."
The museum has raised $10 million as part of a $13 million capital campaign for its "Ready and Forward" program. Funds will be used to repair and renovate the facility and expand exhibits and programs.
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