Events

How do art and health interact? Can an engagement with an artistic practice improve our doctors’ and our own connection to our bodies? What can a deeper understanding of our physical and mental health add to our creative practice? Are there ways to creatively address the barriers that some experience when connecting with the arts?

Alisha Kaplan is a poet, educator, and narrative medicine practitioner. Using the arts, she works with health professionals and patients to reinvigorate medicine with care and humanity. Her degrees include an MFA in Poetry from New York University and an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She teaches Health Humanities at the University of Toronto and is the poetry editor of Parchment. Her debut poetry collection, Qorbanot, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award from the League of Canadian Poets. Other honours she has received include the Hippocrates Prize in Poetry and Medicine, a Post-Graduate Fellowship in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, and a Rona Jaffe Fellowship. Alisha lives on a farm in Hillsburgh, ON, where she grows garlic, harvests honey, and hosts barn dances.

Aaron Lightstone is an award-winning composer, music therapist, psychotherapist, producer, and educator working at the intersection of arts, health care, and community practice. He is best known as the bandleader of Jaffa Road, a two-time JUNO-nominated ensemble recognized with Canadian and Ontario Folk Music Awards, and is currently working with producer Gavin Brown on the band’s fourth album.

Aaron is the founder and Clinical Director of Music Therapy Toronto, specializing in neurologic rehabilitation, mental health, addictions, dementia, and end-of-life care, and has served since 2015 as Music Director of the Bliss iBand, an inclusive ensemble for adults with complex disabilities. In collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer Justin Gray, he co-created six intercultural relaxation albums for hospice and palliative-care settings with the Room 217 Foundation, recognized with Innovation of the Year at the McGill International Palliative Care Conference (2022).