Site Feature: Arts-based Spiritual Care at St.Amant
- Krista Heide
- Apr 24
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 29
Written by Andrew Terhoch, in collaboration with the St.Amant ABSC Facilitators and Advisors. Andrew is a Spiritual Health Practitioner at St.Amant in Winnipeg Manitoba, and a member of our Arts & Spirituality Research Team.
Introducing St.Amant
St.Amant is a not-for-profit organization in Winnipeg, Manitoba that supports over 5,000 people in Manitoba with developmental disabilities, autism, and acquired brain injury, offering a wide range of services to help individuals and their families live meaningful lives as valued members of the community.
Capital C - Circle
It has been a bit of a challenge to begin a blog story about the beginnings of our arts-based spiritual care Circle. So much of our group’s initial story was focused on the process beyond the art itself. So much of what we began exploring and discovering as a group through fall and winter, centered on how we create a connection with one another and ourselves, so that putting ‘sponge to canvas’ in a healing way can become possible.
We have known this to be integral to our path from our first meeting with Kendra and her research team in 2023. As an organization, we understand that for art to be held and respected as a traditional healing practice, we as facilitators, co-creators, staff and the loved ones supporting people with disabilities, we must practice alongside with a commitment to agency and autonomy for others in our own hearts.
Our co-creation practices must hold accompaniment and accessibility with the deepest respect and love. When accessibility and communication are barriers to spiritual exploration and discovery, the qualities of our accompaniment become integral to the possibility of healing. We must look, listen and feel for the subtle expression. We must create and protect intentional, patient space for choice. We must be consistent and reliable co-creators with people, to do with not for as has historically been common.
So, we closed 2024 and began 2025 with that intention. Five facilitators. Two advisors with lived experience. Four participants. And a group of co-creators; volunteers, support staff, nurses and loved ones, all joining a path of healing with a commitment to connection as a guiding principle.
Now here we are, 10 weeks into our journey with great excitement: the presence of healing is felt in our Circle! We have witnessed people touch canvas for the first time, hold and paint with sponges for the first time, create collage, strum instruments, direct musical phrases and document elements of their story in new ways. And equally important, we are discovering our processes.
We are taking cues from eye gaze and slow intentional blinks, from smiles, changes in breathing, tension in posture, and vocalizations. With curiosity, we are discovering slowly, just as any healing journey should be. We have created some lovely, moving art together.
Agency. Autonomy. Co-Creation.
These are the words we documented at the end of our first evening in our art Circle in mid-February. These are words that have been painted by fingertip in color, expressed through eyes, felt by sponges hand-in-hand and held by the Drum. We have gathered weekly since, to create, paint, draw, collage, explore imagery, music and spoken word to create, hold and honor feelings. Words emerged that second week, along with many beautiful creations and artistic expressions.
Respect. Courage. Friends. Story.
In week 6, our little studio came alive with a collage table. An opening song once again welcomed each artist by name, honoring their place in the Circle. Facilitators moved around the Circle with handheld percussion instruments, and with closeness, drew people into the Circle and their senses. Everyone in the Circle expressed in their own way to those around them, ‘it is good to be here with you all’.
Volunteers had clipped magazines in advance to make using specific images more accessible. Facilitators modelled a practice of supporting the artists to explore and choose meaningful images. Each artist with their co-creators selected images that resonated with them. The presence of soft music playing in the background via guitar and gentle vocalizations created safety and comfort for folks to engage in the collage experience. Co-creators were guided by the artists to place the images on the art board in just the right way. More beauty emerged and expressions and emotions too. We closed the Circle by offering tobacco to the Strong Ones in the atrium, feeding them with gratitude for continuing to feed us.
Over these past 5 weeks, we have been creating this foundation watching goodness emerge for everyone involved. Everyone, moving, slowly, and slower still. A deep gift for most healthcare environments. We are sharing choices, and more choices, “yes, no?…this one?…or this one?…now this one, or this one…would you like it placed here…or here…here or here…more red, or is that enough, more blue, or is that enough.. another color, this one or this one…?”. Our process of learning in co-creation, and this opportunity to move with intention and ease has been loving of all of our hearts.
*The artists who created the above art were supportive of the images of their art being shared in this publication only. No images of the art in this blog may be reproduced digitally or physically without consent from the artist.
In our process, we are learning to frame our Circle with rituals and measures of time that honor everyone’s personhood equally through a variety of senses. Music is supporting a spiritual container, woven in with language that even the Strong Ones can understand. We are learning from one another, from the art and from the feeling in the room each week: sacred qualities are emerging for each of us.
As I struggled to write this blog, this short story that is so far less about art and more about our practice in connection, I am considering connection itself an art form. Perhaps connection is in fact “the” art. Connection to color, to shape and to sound. Connection to words, images and symbols. Connection to experience, to emotion and to our selves. If we can create the conditions for us to have a connection with any of these, our story can emerge. It can then be shared. And if we do share, and it lands in ears, in eyes, upon the senses and in the hearts of others, the art connects us to one another and in our common humanity.
For the people we support, to whom life, health and ability indicate they require supports to live fully, our connections in accompaniment are integral to their healing. Relationship is art, and visa versa. So, no surprise to me, but as they often do, folks we support are teaching us. To connect with others, you have to connect with yourself. In art and as co-creators in art just the same.
We will write more about our group’s art and our practices soon. For now, we’ll leave you with the story that began our Circle, before we started to create any art together. The day we set the foundation for healing to arise. The day our process began…
December 2024
On behalf of our facilitator and advisor group that was forming, Miriam passed tobacco to Elder Val, inviting her to come to St. Amant, to feast with us and to share in ceremony to begin our Circle. We set January 15th as the date.
January 2025
In anticipation of our visit with Elder Val and our group’s first gathering, we invited clinicians, social workers, health unit managers, resource nurses and front-line staff, to come together to reflect on launching our vision for accessible art and spiritual exploration Circle. The group reflected on the gift and potential that art holds for healing. We discussed who our first group of invitations would go to. We landed on people on the palliative journey, folks with fragile health for whom having a way of storytelling at this point in life could bring new meaning.
We outlined the opportunity, discussed possible barriers and reflected on how we can collaborate in our supports for people. Most importantly, we reflected on accessibility and the concept of co-creation “doing with, alongside, and feeling with, alongside”.
Occupational Therapists offered support with adapting tools. Speech Pathologists would be invaluable in supporting people in having their voice. And people’s family members, staff and volunteers would be called to Circle to cultivate love, presence and connection, all integral to accompanying people as they work to create their own artistic expressions. Hand over hand, heart within heart. We closed that consultation Circle all agreeing that when it comes to the intimate exploration and healing that art can afford us, presence in co-creation will be integral to agency and autonomy in people feeling new possibilities in exploration and expression.
Three days later, on January 15th, we gathered at our health center’s reception area, shared stories and greeted Elder Val as she arrived. With our art supplies, books, instruments and our medicine bundle in hand, we moved to the beautiful atrium at the centre of our building to begin our Circle amongst the strong ones.
A facilities engineer attended, to ensure fire alarms were not activated during the Smudge Ceremony. And a nurse as well, to ensure the safety for the people from the health centre that were present. We each took a seat in the Circle alongside our community star blanket. The engineer had sat off to the side. Val invited him to come sit alongside new friends. He gladly pulled his seat into the Circle. We acknowledged the land we were on and our shared commitment to Truth and Two-Eyed Seeing. We expressed gratitude for this Circle of friends, who had never in the history of the universe gathered before. Amazing.
(Weeks after that opening ceremony, the engineer that was present, shared the details with a colleague of his work that January night. He shared how he enjoyed his seat in the Sharing Circle. His story of gratitude made its way to his director, and then to our executive leadership team. The Engineer had come to our Circle to ensure the alarms stayed quiet. He left our Circle grateful for his seat, for the drum he held and played and for the Circle he now was a part of. The depth of our Circle’s care for Spirit was wide.)
We meditated in an opening song, Ombay led by Val and Miriam, who together share a long history together in local women’s Drum Circle. Our ancestors had arrived from the Spirit World!
Elder Val shared stories with the Circle, stories of local Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, playwrights and filmmakers. She reflected on a particular film about differently abled superheroes, and then a story of a dancer and model with a prosthetic leg. We reflected on the truth that anything is possible. We agreed that there would be no judgement in our Circle. Val spoke about the importance of Lateral Kindness. And we reflected on the truth that courage arises in us when we look to our left and to our right, and see people who love us for who we are.
(These would be the first of many teachings that Elder Val would come share with the Circle week after week. From the ways the animals watch humans and know which ones to trust, to the ways the trees take care of one another and the way ‘Circle’ should be capitalized once it moves from being a shape, to becoming a container that holds love, people and their stories.)
We then each spoke, some silently, in a Sharing Circle. We shared what was in our hearts as we begin this journey. We shared a Sage Smudge, with a touch of the four directions Medicine (a secret recipe Val noted) pinched on top of the sage. We smudged our Drums, paintbrushes, art supplies, guitars, xylophones, poetry books, cymbals, rattles, and of course our Circle and ourselves.
“May we see goodness, may we listen for goodness, may we speak in good ways, think good thoughts, and may our hearts feel the goodness of life. May this Circle, this atrium, these trees and this community know the good benefits of all that we create together”.
Our closing prayer came from the writing of the late Richard Wagamese; “We all have stories within us… (What Comes from Spirit, 2013)”. We passed around drums from our medicine bundle and shared in closing song, a Travelling Song. We folded up the Star Blanket and made our way to a dining table in the boardroom for a feast. Salad, Bannock, Tea and Bison Shepherds Pie. We created a spirit plate. We ate, laughed, shared stories of sadness and joy, fear and courage. New friends. A new Circle.
As we departed, we shared hugs and well wishes until we meet again. I walked the Spirit Plate outdoors, around to the back of our property and placed it atop the snow under a strong, Red Pine. A good path had been created…
The facilitator Circle for St.Amant’s Arts-based Spiritual Care Group includes:
· Val Vint, Rainbow Horse Woman, aka Deadly Auntie!, Elder, Knowledge Carrier and Métis Artist
· Miriam Duff, Expressive Arts Therapist, artist
· Erika Einarson, Music Therapist, musician
· Lindsay McCombe, Researcher, artist, advocate for accessible art practice in our community
· Andrew Terhoch, Spiritual Health Practitioner, poet.
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