Mission

Harvard ARTZ (HARTZ) is a student-run organization of the Phillips Brooks House Association dedicated to using the creative arts to enhance the quality of life of older adults, especially those living with cognitive decline.  Through art workshops and other art programs, HARTZ aims to create a safe space for personal discovery, creative expression, and community solidarity.

Core values

HARTZ believes in:

  • Creating a welcoming space where creative expression is unleashed. Everybody has the ability to be creative; no experience is required or even preferred. We celebrate all ideas and creations.
  • Building collaborative relationships. Student and adult participants make art together.  We appreciate the process of sharing in a common experience.
  • Promoting lifelong learning and teaching.  Participants are under the guidance of student workshop leaders but student facilitators learn from the perspectives and knowledge of the participants as well.

Our story

HARTZ was founded in the fall of 2014 by Joyce Zhou and Michelle Guo under the guidance of Sean Caulfield Ed.M. and Arlene Katz, Ph.D.  HARTZ conducted its first art workshop series with eight team members at Hebrew Senior Life in Roslindale, MA, but since then, has expanded to a cohesive team of twenty students and is serving adults with cognitive difficulties at the Cambridge Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.  Always looking for ways to impact a larger community, HARTZ is collaborating with the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture to develop museum programming for older adults as well as the the Harvard Office for the Arts to implement a collaborative art-making project for the ARTS FIRST festival in April, 2016.