Research

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT OF THE ARTS RESEARCH LAB

The NEA Research Lab at UCLA is directed toward NEA’s Arts, Health, and Social/Emotional Well-Being initiative.


We are interested in answering the questions:

  • What are the social, emotional, physical, and/or physiological health benefits of the arts for individuals, groups, or societies?
  • What physiological or psychological mechanisms or group dynamics are at work in achieving those benefits or related outcomes?

    • To help answer these questions the NEA Research Lab at UCLA is:

  • Developing a reliable, valid, flexible, and scalable Arts Impact Measurement System (AIMS).
  • Implementing the new AIMS methods in demonstration projects to refine the system, demonstrate its adaptability to different settings and questions, and illustrate its utility in studying psychological mechanisms that mediate arts’ impacts on academic achievement, health and well-being.

    • Examples of our collaborative projects:

    CURRENT PROJECTS:

  • Music, Moving Art, and Dialysis Study
    We are collaborating with the investigators within the UCLA Department of Nephrology Music & Health program in developing a new randomized controlled trial of music intervention to identify its impacts on health related outcomes and psychological well-being in dialysis patients.

  • Mindful Music Series
    We are working in collaboration with Ethel Roxas of the Semel Institute on the Mindful Music series , which consists of a series of performances to bring together the Semel Institute community through music. We are continually deploying the AIMS before and after these performances throughout each academic year.

  • Moving Art x UCLA
    We are collaborating with the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative (HCI) and award-winning cinematographer, director, and UCLA alum, Louie Schwartzberg and his team to display his Moving Art videos (as seen on Netflix and Disney) on screens in various buildings on campus. The AIMS was deployed at these locations so that students and staff could report their psychological well-being and feelings of awe while experiencing the visual art.

    • PAST PROJECTS:

  • Veteran Journeys Opera
    Veteran Journeys is an opera by Dr. Kenneth Wells, internationally renowned leader in community based participatory research, who has worked on arts interventions and assessments of health and wellness outcomes in underserved communities. We used the AIMS system during the first showings of Veteran Journeys in June 2021, collecting pre- and post-opera feedback from audience members.
    • You can read about this project in the following publication: Bilder, R. M., Mango, J., Jeffers, K. S., Tang, L., Stinnett, M., Constantino, A., ... & Wells, K. (2022). Impact of Veteran Journeys opera on audience member attitudes related to veterans with posttraumatic stress or unstable housing. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000503

  • The Center Cannot Hold Opera
    We deployed the AIMS once more with Dr. Kenneth Wells and his team at an in-person and virtual streaming version of the opera, The Center Cannot Hold . You can read about this project in the following publication:
    Wells, K. B., Zhang, L., Saks, E. R., & Bilder, R. M. (2024). Impact of opera on resilience and thriving in serious mental illness: pilot evaluation of the Center Cannot Hold part 2 and resilience workshop. Community mental health journal, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-024-01248-9

  • Jazz in the Classroom
    Jazz in the Classroom is a program launched by the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz; our collaborator Daniel Seeff is the West Coast Director of the Hancock Institute, and leads the Institute’s Los Angeles public school outreach programming. This project was implemented at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), specifically in connection with its Beyond the Bell program, headed by Tony White and Pablo Garcia-Hernandez.

  • Big Picture Exhibit
    We partnered with Indre Viskontas, an Osher Fellow, and Rhonda Rubenstein as well as her entire team at the California Academy of Sciences to deploy the AIMS at the Big Picture Exhibit , a renowned natural world photography competition. We collected data from exhibit visitors; we found that most participants reported having high-energy, positive feelings following the exhibit.

  • Drumming for Your Life
    The DFYL Life Skills Drumming program was developed by Steven Angel to help at-risk youth and people with addiction, trauma and mental illness. We conducted assessments before and after sessions of the Life Skills Drumming program at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LACDMH).