Grant Spotlight: Gilda's Club Metro Detroit

A cancer diagnosis can be isolating, overwhelming, and difficult to discuss. At Gilda's Club Metro Detroit, the arts help people affected by cancer find another way to express what they're feeling—offering opportunities for connection and healing.

The nonprofit organization provides free support for anyone impacted by cancer, including patients, family members, friends, and caregivers. Named for Detroit native Gilda Radner, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1985, Gilda's Club provides support groups, educational presentations, social activities, resources and referrals, and healthy lifestyle programs. Among those offerings, its arts programming has become one of the organization's most sought-after services, with attendance increasing 42 percent over the past year.

“Art can be a really good avenue for someone who doesn't quite have the words yet to talk about what they're going through, what they're experiencing,” said Adrian Benedict, grant director at Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit. “Art can give them an opportunity to begin to process their experience without having to have those words.”

“Art is a really good first step to open that door to healing.”

Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit received a $24,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant this year to support their art therapy and therapeutic arts activities, an investment that Benedict says is instrumental to keeping these programs free and accessible to members, 50 percent of whom report an income of less than $50,000 per year.

“Paying for art therapy outside of a clinical setting is not feasible for a lot of people, not just our members,” she said. “Funding like this is so incredibly important to people's healing journey, to be able to come somewhere like Gilda's Club and pick their own adventure.”

Benedict recalled one member who came to Gilda's Club after losing her husband to cancer. She initially joined an art therapy program and found the experience so meaningful that she now leads a therapeutic arts group where participants create handmade cards that are sold to raise funds for Gilda's Club.

Gilda’s Club offers both art therapy and therapeutic arts to its members. Art therapy is conducted by a licensed creative arts therapist in a clinical setting where art is used as a tool for psychotherapy. Therapeutic arts, meanwhile, can be taught by artists and other instructors without clinical credentials but still have significant benefits, including reducing stress and regulating emotions. 

Among Gilda’s Club's therapeutic arts offerings, polymer clay classes are the most popular. Other activities include basket weaving, paint-by-number projects, and a variety of hands-on creative experiences. Benedict said working with your hands helps calm the mind, grounding participants in the present rather than allowing their thoughts to drift toward worries about the future.

Arts Endowment Chairman Mary Anne Carter recently visited Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit, meeting with staff and members to discuss the benefits of art therapy and therapeutic arts. 

“National Endowment for the Arts supported research continues to demonstrate the positive impact the arts can have on our health and well-being, and seeing that impact firsthand is truly inspiring,” she said of her experience. “When I visited Gilda's Club Metro Detroit, I was incredibly moved by the sense of community there. It is an outstanding example of how the arts play an essential role in helping us navigate life’s most difficult health-related challenges.”

The Arts Research on Chronic Stress (ARCS) National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab at Drexel University studied a program that offered radiation oncology patients and caregivers free sessions with an art therapist. Researchers found that participants left feeling “more positive, less stressed, less anxious, and more self-confident.”

For Benedict, those findings reflect what she sees every day at Gilda's Club, as well as the organization's own survey results.

According to Benedict, “96 percent of participants report they feel more empowered to better navigate the complexities of a cancer diagnosis after attending Gilda’s Club,” and “97 percent report feeling less alone after connecting with the Gilda’s Club community.”

Benedict said she hopes other organizations serving people through challenging life experiences will consider incorporating the arts into their work, even if they do not think of themselves as arts organizations. The key, she said, is partnering with trained professionals, like Gilda’s Club's resident registered art therapist Erin Shahly.

She also noted that one of the biggest barriers to participation is a belief that you have to be a talented or trained artist to benefit from creative activities. 

“I think that's a misconception across art as a whole, that if you're not good at something or you've never tried it before, that you won't benefit from it,” she said. “But we really see art, especially art therapy here, is not an extra or an add-on. It's something that you come to and it's a part of this whole entire process and you learn something through it. You learn about yourself. You learn about your abilities.”