Expressive Arts Therapies at Bradley Hospital

Healing Arts Program Artists

Hands in Harmony, LLC

Nicole O’Malley MT-BC, NMT/F LPMT and Team

Hands in Harmony is a Rhode Island based nonprofit organization that provides neurologic music therapy services to medically fragile clients and families/caregivers. We practice evidenced-based, replicable interventions, grounded in research. Our music therapists provide neurologic music therapy services to those suffering from complex medical conditions (cognitive, social, communicative, behavioral, psychological, sensory-motor, and physical) or deficiencies, as well as to the families and caretakers that support them. Services are provided throughout Rhode Island and into southern Massachusetts, using a neuroscience-based medical model and highly-trained therapists.
 
Nicole O’Malley is a board-certified neurologic music therapist licensed in the state of Rhode Island. She is the founder and executive director of Hands in Harmony, LLC (founded in 2008) and has been practicing neurologic music therapy in Rhode Island since 2003. She received her degree from Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts, and holds additional certification in neurologic music therapy from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is an adjunct professor at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, and is a regular presenter locally as well as nationally. O’Malley is currently pursuing additional certification on music therapy and pain through Tufts University. As the chair of the Rhode Island Music Therapy Task Force, she has extensive experience in music therapy programming throughout Rhode Island and Massachusetts. She is passionate about conducting music therapy with groups and individuals in a variety of settings and collaborating to offer a multitude of services to a variety of clientele.

Shri Studio

Alison Bologna and Team

Shri Studio is an urban revitalization yoga project, offering all levels of yoga practice in a beautiful space while promoting physical, spiritual, and social well-being. The word “shri” can be loosely translated as “that which diffuses light.” The studio’s name reflects the studio’s mission: “to illuminate in the belief that yoga can be accessible to everyone and every body.” Founded in 2010, Shri is the only yoga outreach organization of its kind in Rhode Island, serving adults and children with developmental and intellectual disabilities, veterans, children in schools, hospitals and shelters, incarcerated youth, men and women in recovery, in clinics- and more. 

With the unique S-H-R-I curriculum, which combines an innovative approach to movement-based yoga classes with community building, mindfulness, and character education components built in, measured impact and outcomes are improving lives across state lines. 

Shri Studios travels to Bradley Hospital to work with the Children’s Partial Hospital Program, and is collaborating currently with other hospital programs.

Alison Bologna is the founder, outreach instructor, and executive director of Shri Studio. She is an E-RYT certified yoga instructor, with more than 2,000 hours of teaching experience and the founder and director of Shri's now 80-hour yoga outreach teacher training. In addition to her general certification, her training includes all three levels of Little Flower Yoga Kids Teacher Training with Kate Reil, hosted at Shri; Frontiers of Trauma Treatment Training with Bessel van der Kolk, MD and Dana Moor; Harmonium Sound Training with Daniel Tucker, Ashtanga Yoga with David Swenson and Mindful Schools' Mindfulness Training.

Bologna's work in the community has been recognized by Providence Business News, The Women's Center of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Small Business Journal, The National Organization of Italian-American Women, L.I.F.E., Inc., the Rally for Recovery, ARC of Blackstone Valley, the Blackstone Valley Children's Shelter, the Rhode Island Attorney General, The Pawtucket Foundation, RI Monthly Magazine and more.

Bologna recently completed her second master's degree in literature from Harvard University, with her thesis focused on Henry David Thoreau, the first American KARMA Yogi. In 2015, she produced and hosted an hour-long documentary for PBS on "Healing Violence" with a look inside state prisons, police departments, and social service agencies where yoga and mindfulness programs in addition to other innovative initiatives in the state are producing promising outcomes for building more compassionate communities.

Throughout the year, Bologna is asked to be a featured speaker about Shri's programs and the "Career + Community Connection;" most recently she served as a keynote speaker for events held by the Providence Business News, Roger Williams University, Rhode Island College, Rhode Island's Healthy School Coalition, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, Central Falls' School Department, the Girls Leadership Collaborative, and the 2016 ECET2 conference. She is a board member at the Old Slater Mill Historical Museum, The Providence Center and the Pawtucket Boys and Girls Club. When not at Shri, Bologna is a television news anchor for NBC 10 News.

Trinity Repertory Company

Jordan Butterfield

Jordan Butterfield is the director of education and accessibility and a teaching artist at Trinity Repertory Company. She teaches acting and improvisation classes, oversees the general program development for the department, and leads workshops at schools throughout Rhode Island. She also is the founder of TRAIN (Trinity Rep Active Imagination Network), a theater program specially designed for children and adults on the autism spectrum and with other cognitive or physical disabilities. Through TRAIN, she is the drama instructor at Bradley Hospital, The Autism Project, Sargent Rehabilitation Center, The Bradley Center, Bradley Schools, and Seven Hills RI.

Butterfield co-directs the Young Actors Summer Institute, one of the most comprehensive arts programs in New England. She also manages the Young Actors Studio and adult studio classes which run during the theater’s season from September to May. Butterfield served on the steering committee of the Rhode Island Teaching Artists Center (RITAC) in its pilot year, was a core member of the Arts and Healthcare committee for the RI Department of Health and is on the Trinity Rep team for OF/BY/FOR ALL’s First Wave cohort, a global movement for community engagement. She manages Trinity Rep’s accessibility programming, including the Sensory Friendly and Sensory Friendly Plus series, Open Captioning, and American Sign Language interpreted offerings. She is a graduate of Brandeis University where she double majored in history and theater arts with concentrations in acting and dramaturgy.
 
Trinity Repertory Company believes that theater has a unique power to enrich and transform lives. In the past 45 years, the company’s Project Discovery student matinees have reached over 1.2 million children, instructing more than 300 students per week in 24 different programs. They have classes specially designed for children on the autism spectrum, the first of their kind in the region. Teaching artist Jordan Butterfield makes weekly visits to the adolescent inpatient unit and teaches two acting classes focusing on improvisation, acting and playwriting. Improvisation allows the group to initiate conversations and analyze body language, tone of voice and gestures. Patients build confidence, learn to express their emotions in a healthy way, and have fun with their peers.

West African Drumming

Sidy Maiga

Sidy Maiga is a renowned djembefola, sharing his music with Bradley Hospital and the world. A djembefola is a musician who gives the djembe its voice. In the hands of a master, a drum comes alive. It sings, laughs, whispers, and electrifies its audience— and Sidy Maiga knows exactly how to bring it to life. For more than 25 years, Maiga has shared the joys of drumming with students and audiences around the world. Maiga performs, creates, and connects with people day after day, and this informs his teaching. He instructs a class on djembe and dundun drumming to students at schools and universities throughout the country. He teaches at all levels and encourages people, especially beginners, to leave their comfort zones. “I like to connect people with their own self and show them that they can do it.”

Maiga offers intensive workshops that immerse students in the complex and beautiful rhythms of West Africa. The workshops cover proper hand techniques as well as the cultural context of drumming in Mali. Children often do best by learning in an interactive and hands-on environment. A workshop with Maiga gives students the opportunity to learn about rhythm, patterns, and the Malian and West African culture. It is also a great way to help students build confidence and to engage them in a musical setting. Whether you have 10 students or 300, Maiga can structure the program to best accommodate your needs.

Tape Art

Michael Townsend and Team

The Tape Art movement originated in Providence, Rhode Island in 1989 in the form of large-scale, collaborative drawings created in public spaces. The original Tape Art Crew continues to pioneer and evolve this medium and over the last 30 years they have produced over 500 public works and thousands of smaller drawings in locations around the globe.

Artist Michael Townsend has turned a utilitarian tool— low-adhesive colored tape—into his artistic medium of choice. He first created with tape while attending Rhode Island School of Design, where he graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in printmaking. One night Townsend and fellow artists used rolls of masking tape to create a figure holding a balloon on the ground, and his love of doing and sharing tape art took off from there.

He favors tape as an artistic medium because it allows him to work on large-scale projects, lends itself to collaboration, and is easy to teach. Townsend instructs patients in the adolescent inpatient unit how to make their own tape art murals.

RI Latin Dance

Mori Granot Sanchez

Owner Mori Granot-Sanchez, based in Rhode Island, is the founder and director of Rhode Island Latin Dance, a dance school she started in 2012. 

In 2017 she launched her professional dance team, RILD-Synergy. 
Through her community work, Granot Sanchez teaches weekly salsa classes at the Brown University Salsa Club and directs their performance team Alma Salsera. 

She ran various after school dance programs and art credit-eligible dance classes for inner-city youth in high schools throughout the state. She currently teaches at Bradley Hospital for the Expressive Arts Therapies Program, where she provides a creative and therapeutic dance outlet to improve and enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of young patients.

Granot Sanchez began dancing at the age of five in Haifa, Israel, delving into Israeli folk, jazz, modern and ballet. She began dancing salsa at age 17. Her travels led her to the U.S. in 2006, where she would later pursue her love of salsa and embark on her professional dance career. 

In 2008, Granot Sanchez started dancing and performing in RI. In 2011, she started training and working with Masacote Entertainment and participated in a Dance and Music research in Cuba and Puerto Rico through Meta-Movements Dance Co. In 2017, Granot Sanchez started teaching and performing with Masacote Dance Company. (Masa Women's Troup, Masa2 and Masacote Dance Co.) Currently, she teaches and performs with her own dance company and collaborates with different artists for various dance projects. 

Granot Sanchez is a dancer, teacher, choreographer and performer who focuses on salsa as a teaching tool for self-development and to further inclusivity.

For Granot Sanchez, life is a never-ending cycle of lessons – she believes each day should be lived to better one’s self and that personal enrichment means nothing unless one can bring the best out of fellow dancers and improve the dance community by creating a safe, non-judgmental space for people of all races, genders and backgrounds to come together and dance.

Generation POUND

Noelle Johnson

Noelle Johnson is a certified Generation POUND instructor who works in a variety of settings including schools and hospitals. She shares her passion for musicality and movement by bringing the youth-oriented Generation POUND program to Bradley Hospital and centers. Using drumming techniques, this program fuses movement and music to improve focus, coordination, physical fitness, and teamwork skills.
 
Johnson brings a unique energy to her classes. She emphasizes the importance of self-expression, empowerment, self-love, and fun. By combining exercise and interactive activities, students learn new ways to explore movement, embrace their creativity and rock out – ultimately, building strength, confidence, and self-awareness. 
 
Designed for all fitness levels, POUND provides the perfect atmosphere for letting loose, getting energized, toning up and rockin’ out! The workout is easily modifiable and the alternative vibe and welcoming philosophy appeals to men and women of all ages and abilities. Instead of listening to music, you become the music in this exhilarating full-body workout that combines cardio, conditioning, and strength training with yoga and pilates-inspired movements. Using Ripstix, lightly weighted drumsticks engineered specifically for exercising, POUND transforms drumming into an incredibly effective way of working out.

POUND was created in 2011 by two women who were both recreational drummers and former college athletes. They relied heavily on stability-based exercises like pilates to keep their bodies aligned, symmetrical and lean, but were bored with routine and longed to reignite the fun in exercise. It wasn’t until they were forced to drum without a stool and squat over the drum kit that they realized drumming and exercise could be one and the same. Led by co-creator and CEO, Kirsten Potenza, POUND is currently taught by over 25,000 instructors in 100+ countries to hundreds of thousands of participants a week, making an active, supportive and passionate community.

Poetry and Writing

Julie Lauterbach-Colby

Julie Lauterbach-Colby is a writer and creative who lives and works outside Providence, Rhode Island. She has taught writing and writing workshops at the university and community level, from adults to young children. At the core of her teaching is the belief that writing and storytelling have the power to transform how we think about ourselves and our place in the larger world. Her work has appeared in CutBank, DIAGRAM, Lost Magazine, Small Po[r]tions, and, most recently, in the anthology How We Speak to One Another. She graduated from the University of Arizona with an MFA in creative nonfiction.

Guitarist

Chris Monti

Chris Monti is a musician, songwriter, bandleader, and educator. His eclectic style reveals his passion for rock and roll, country-blues, early jazz, R and B, as well as music from the Americas, Middle East, India, and North and West Africa.

Singing and playing electric guitar and harmonica in several bands, he leads his self named band playing an upbeat mix of original dance music along with West African and Caribbean songs. As a member of another high energy, power trio dance band, he plays covers of great Rock, Surf, Mambo, Cumbia, Punk, Blues, Boogie, R and B, Latin Pop and Country Songs.

Known for his effortless style and musical curiosity, Monti has been doing the good work as a musician in New England for over fifteen years. He has immersed himself in West African style guitar, dug deep into country-blues and old-time music, and moves seamlessly between diverse styles from Egypt, Peru and India. Monti has played with the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars, Big Nazo, and the Double Decker Dance Band. Touring the East Coast, Canada and points west, he also enjoys his singular role in the community as a strange combination of entertainer, educator, and magician.

Along with the ensemble work, Monti has collaborated with puppeteers, and also has a charming, folky, acoustic repertoire up his sleeve, ideal for schools, listening rooms, children’s sing-alongs, libraries, farmers markets and other community events. He also plays at Hasbro Children’s Hospital as well as at senior living spaces. 

Educational Entertainer

Marvelous Marvin

For over 26 years, Marvelous Marvin Novogrodski has blended science, magic, circus arts, great visuals, and a unique rhyming text to create memorable, fun, and educational entertainment for children in schools, libraries, museums, theaters and special events throughout New England. Performing mostly for children from kindergarten through eighth grade, Marvelous Marvin’s shows include The Magic of Science, which demystifies the scientific process; How the Body Works, which makes physiology fun; and Bugging Out, which is all about bugs. Math Blast, his newest show, gives students the opportunity to enjoy his fun-filled math class. Marvelous Marvin also offers two workshops: the Science/Dance Experience for young children, and the Circus Arts Workshop for events such as field days, gym classes, fairs and festivals.

For the special needs community, Marvelous Marvin mixes his magic shows with hands-on circus arts, giving clients the opportunity to be both audience and participant. Marvelous Marvin works directly with patients in a variety of inpatient, residential, and partial programs.