Hurricane season shines a light on the importance of first responders — from paramedics to firefighters — but often overlooked are the “second responders” from the creative world.  
 
Year-round, artists play integral roles in the recovery of communities that have suffered from natural disasters, public health emergencies, and socioeconomic plights — in Florida and beyond. Individuals in the University of Florida’s College of the Arts are exploring just how much these artists make an impact in times of crisis — delivering hope when people need it most.  
 
‘Second responders’ 
 
The concept of artists being viewed as "second responders" — culture workers who bring arts engagement practices to disaster-impacted communities after first responders are called to emergency sites – has been increasingly studied in recent years. While first responders save lives, second responders help rebuild lives by supporting community resilience through collective art making.   
 
This concept was explored as one part of an event at UF in early August called Recovery Through the Arts Convening — a culmination of the College of the Arts’ 2024 Creative B Summer Program, which allows students to participate in large-scale creative projects on campus throughout the Summer B term. The event brought artists, academics, and thought leaders together in UF’s Malachowsky Hall to brainstorm collaborative, interdisciplinary solutions for recovery efforts.  
 
Panelists and presenters addressed questions such as, “How are we [artists] speaking up for the community?” and “How can a participatory community art project affect the trajectory of gentrification?” 
 
Colleen Rua, Ph.D., the acting associate dean of research and strategic initiatives in the UF College of the Arts, spoke about the significant role that artists from the Y No Había Luz theatre collective have played in Puerto Rico after multiple natural disasters. Rua, whose research centers in part on Latinx/Puerto Rican contemporary theatre, collaborates with this collective (the name of which translates to “And There Was No Light” in English).  
 
Rua described these artists as “performers of care” whose work as second responders — which involves “magical storytelling,” artist talks, and community performances — has helped people cope with the devastation in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Fiona in 2022.  
 
“Initially, when [Y No Había Luz] were called upon by the mayor of San Juan to go into shelters and work with folks, they thought, ‘We're not water, we're not food, we're not power generators. Should we even do this?,’” Rua recalled. “But they loaded up their van with puppets, crayons, markers, and their instruments — because those are the resources they have, right? — and they went into the community and did this work. And it was really impactful.”  

With this type of creative community impact in mind, UF leaders have continued strategizing ways artists can further serve the public during emergencies and other times of need. 

Making an impact on public health through public art 
 
Artists aligned with UF are helping communities recover and rebuild — not just from natural disasters but also from long-term public health and safety issues that affect their daily well-being. 
 
Art projects like the HeART Wall, led by UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine practitioner Sarah Hinds, are prime examples of how the arts and public health go hand in hand. The large-scale mosaic wall — completed in May and constructed by more than 2,500 people throughout Gainesville — successfully brought the local community together for a common cause: to promote a healthier, safer, and more unified city. 
 
“Each heart represents a thread in the vibrant fabric of our community, woven together to form a powerful visual symbol of unity and creativity,” the creators said. 
 
The wall was part of SPARC352 — a UF-based, community-engaged research and programming initiative that is grounded in the idea that arts are at the core of vibrant, healthy communities. 
 
“[The HeART Wall] instills a different kind of hope in the community,” said SPARC352 Project Manager Carla Lewis. “[This work] can’t be a phase; it needs to be a sustainable practice for the community.”  
 
The sense of belonging that is built through this type of art making, community organizers believe, can serve as a counter to gentrification. When public art provides a way for communities to recover from a history of shared trauma, it becomes a space for better health outcomes, and for educating and empowering people.  
 
The HeART Wall was just one of the recent One Nation/One Project events that used public art as a method for healing deep-seated trauma from youth gun violence in Gainesville.  
 
Engaging in artistic and cultural experiences has been proven to support public health, and experts at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and the UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine work together to research the benefits of this practice. Arts prescribing will eventually become a standard practice in healthcare, according to Jernie Millán, the community arts coordinator for UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine.  
 
Movement can be a key component of this kind of healing, too. To this end, Assistant Professor Sarah Gamble in the UF School of Architecture creates walking experiences to prompt people to connect with their environments. These walking experiences are “dispensed” by Walking Stations, which generate detailed instructions for 10-to-30-minute walks, along with literature on the topics of the mind-body connection and recovery, as well as complementary creative exercises such as photography or collage. 
 
Eric Segal, Ph.D., the director of education and curator of academic programs at the Harn Museum of Art, works to engage community members with art institutions like museums to improve their wellness. Mike O’Malley teaches a course in the UF Honors Program called “Making Place in Gainesville: How Creative Practices Shape Our City,” in which his students use storytelling, mindfulness, and visual communication to design solutions to real-world issues for local businesses.  
 
O’Malley’s course digs into the question of who benefits when the arts are incorporated into economic and community development strategies. Regardless of the circumstance, whether it is a community-based struggle brought on by a storm or a social issue, artists are there — many of them from UF — serving the public in this way, with the arts playing a central role. 
 
Effecting change through AI and the arts 
 
The ways in which artists serve their communities is constantly evolving, and new technologies are providing artists with even more advanced tools for participating in disaster recovery efforts and effecting cultural change.  
 
For example, Associate Professor of AI and the Arts and Banks Preeminent Chair of the Digital Worlds Institute Amelia Winger-Bearskin uses her artwork to show how AI can help conceptualize climate disasters — especially rising water levels that are at the forefront of Florida’s coastal concerns. 
 
In UF's School of Theatre and Dance, Visiting Research Assistant Professor Braxton Rae and Associate Professor of AI and the Arts/Immersive Performance Technologies Heidi Boisvert, Ph.D., co-created an immersive theatre production called “Painting Humanity: An Immersive Journey Through Life’s Moments.” The performance pushed the audience to engage with AI directly, embracing “technology as a creative partner.” 
 
Interdisciplinary artist Marlon Barrios Solano was recently appointed the next maker-in-residence at the UF Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship with a focus on AI and the arts. He created a digital design with music that involved a small language model generating images through AI — images informed by his designs and a set of search terms related to his Venezuelan American heritage. 
 
Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship Director Oṣubi Craig praised Barrios Solano's work in AI technology, noting that “as UF seeks to lead the way in exploring new AI applications, Marlon’s residency provides a perfect opportunity to examine the activation of AI into creative spaces to build new possibilities and horizons.”   
  
What impact will this new technology have on how artists approach recovery efforts, community building, and cultural understanding? The keynote speaker for the Recovery Through the Arts Convening event, Julian C. Chambliss, Ph.D., is exploring this concept in the context of Afrofuturism — a cultural, political, and intellectual movement that reimagines the past, present, and future through a Black lens to help reshape the public’s understanding of technology and culture. 
 
The professor of English and the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum at Michigan State University created a textbook entitled “Mapping Afrofuturism” — a topic that UF’s Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship will also delve into during a week-long series in January.  
 
Chambliss’ work inspires audiences to consider new paths and imagine a different world — one focused on the collective good, where coalitions bring resources together in the name of health, wealth, and success for all. 
 
This idea gives equal weight to the necessity of navigating trauma through creative practices. Making art is joyful, and joy helps communities — whether plagued by natural disasters, public health crises, or socioeconomic concerns — overcome the gravity of trauma and ultimately rebuild.  

The Recovery Through the Arts Convening event was sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere — and co-sponsored by the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship and the College of the Arts’ Creative B Summer Program — with support from the Office of the Provost. 
 
For a full list of 2024 projects in the Creative B Summer Program and the grant application to engage with the 2025 theme of sustainability, visit arts.ufl.edu/about/creative-b/overview. 
  
To learn more about Rua’s work with Y No Había Luz, and how artists can become vital agents in disaster recovery, read UF COTA researchers explore artists’ role as ‘second responders’ in communities impacted by natural disasters.  
 
To learn more about One Nation/One Project, read City of Gainesville, UF Center for Arts in Medicine participate in One Nation/One Project, ‘Arts For EveryBody’ national initiative.