Aly Maier Lokuta on the Intersection of Arts and Health

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Monica Holt: What if I told you that going to a concert once or twice a month is as good for your brain as working out for an hour or two every week? Pretty much sounds ideal, right? Well, today on CI to Eye, I’m talking with Aly Maier Lokuta, the Assistant Vice President of Arts and Well-being at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. And Aly’s got the receipts to prove that the work we’re already doing in arts organizations is literally making people healthier. Aly’s the force behind ArtsRx, New Jersey’s first social prescribing program where doctors prescribe arts activities like dance classes, museum visits, or shows at NJPAC to help people dealing with isolation, chronic illness, and caregiving stress. And it’s all free for those who are prescribed. We’re diving into one of the busiest falls of Aly’s career, and she breaks down exactly how arts administrators can start talking about their work through this health lens. Aly mentions a number of great resources throughout this episode, which we’ve linked in the show notes, and I’d also encourage everyone to supplement their listening by checking out Aly’s Substack. You can find her at alymaier.substack.com. Whether you’re ready to launch a whole new program or you just want to better understand the impact of arts on our wellbeing, this conversation is for you because people who engage in the arts live longer, happier, and healthier lives.

Aly Maier Lokuta, welcome to CI to Eye. Thank you so much for making the time to be here with us today. I’m so excited to chat.

Aly Maier Lokuta: Thank you so much, Monica. It’s lovely to be here.

Monica Holt: It’s so good to see you. We had the chance to get to know each other a little bit as the Kennedy Center was working on some of its arts and wellbeing programs and how we expanded and you were such a thoughtful guide and thought partner in so much of that work, but it’s really been amazing to see how you have taken a lot of principles from different parts of your life and woven them together into this incredible program that’s been happening at NJPAC and beyond. I would love to start by just talking a little bit about this fall, because you just wrapped up this season of Arts in Health 2025, and that included the Creating Healthy Communities Convening in October at NJPAC, but I think there was also a plenary during the United Nations General Assembly. So congratulations, first of all, on this very exciting fall. Can you talk to us a little bit about this season of arts and health and how it came together?

Aly Maier Lokuta: Yes. The season of arts in health started in the programming of — The season of arts in health started in September with the UN General Assembly Healing Arts Week produced by the Jameel Arts and Health Lab out of NYU, and continued into October with Creating Healthy Communities here at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center with the UF Center for Arts in Medicine, and then just wrapped up actually just yesterday with the National Organization for Arts and Health events at NYU in person in the beginning of November. And so it was very serendipitous that the three events ended up being so geographically close and in quick sequence, as fall conferences tend to be — it’s a conference season. But it was through open dialogue and active communication through all of these partners that we were like, this may be actually something beautiful and we should definitely — I mean, I think it was a motivation as soon as NOAH settled on New York City that we were not going to do this in silos or be in competition with one another, but really share the good news that there is a season of arts in health, that you can be in community over and over and over again around the themes of arts and health and find one another.

And it speaks to something that’s inherent in the field of arts in health. By its name and definition, it is collaborative and interdisciplinary. And so folks in the field kind of producing each of these events, we are in community with one another and so we’re communicating very regularly about the things that are on our radar. And so the energy was just so palpable moving through each of the three events and the kind of momentum of community building and connections and collaborations… The energy was really, really palpable.

Monica Holt: How do you think that particularly Creating Healthy Communities, which is a convening that has had these previous lives, how has that grown over the past three years? What was different about this year than where it might’ve been prior to now?

Aly Maier Lokuta: Sure. In 2022, the themes really centered around the emerging evidence of arts in health. And so here in 2025, we find ourselves in a different landscape for the field. Yes, we’re still talking about emerging evidence, but we’re really talking about existing evidence. The evidence that points to the fact that arts participation is a health behavior like exercise, brushing your teeth… We can talk about arts in the same conversation that if arts participation is a health behavior, then access to arts is a social driver of health. And we have now a really robust evidence base to point to, and this year, the second day was really focused on arts prescribing: how communities, organizations, can take up the helm of arts prescribing in their backyards and how they can look to the evidence to support those initiatives and how it might really frame new conversations around health, about what matters to you, instead of ‘What’s the matter with you?’

Monica Holt: That’s right. For folks who might not be as aware of it, can you just lay out what arts prescribing is?

Aly Maier Lokuta: Sure. So arts prescribing is kind of a subset of social prescribing. And social prescribing recognizes the fact that health begins outside of the four walls of a hospital. And social prescribing enables health and social care workers to connect folks with nonclinical community-based resources that support their health and wellbeing. And so in our field, in our context, arts prescribing is connecting folks with those arts and culture resources that support their health and wellbeing. So ArtsRx is our arts on prescription program at NJPAC, and in that program, health and social care workers actually prescribe people arts and culture as a part of their holistic care. So someone who is talking to a community health worker about how they can get health resources and the community health worker says, it sounds like maybe you’re facing a little bit of social isolation or loneliness or chronic illness, or maybe you’re a caregiver, I think you’d be a good candidate for ArtsRx.

And they say, what’s ArtsRx? Well, ArtsRx gives you access to six arts and cultural activities all throughout Newark and Essex County over the course of six months for your health and wellbeing. And they’re all paid for, and you can bring up to two guests each time you attend an arts activity. And we have a new transportation partnership with Lyft, so we can get you to and from the arts activities. There’s a lot of agency and choice in the arts activities that they get to choose. We’ve just onboarded our twelfth arts partner. Yes, they can come to a show at NJPAC, and many do. They can also go to Soul Line Dancing at Newark Symphony Hall or a workshop at the museum.

Monica Holt: I mean, it’s an amazing program and it does seem to be that we are starting to see more programs like this pop up. With momentum building and thinking about this season of arts and health that’s just happened, what do you think is driving that impulse right now for folks to be turning more towards this arts and health intersection?

Aly Maier Lokuta: Well, I think it’s a kind of confluence of factors. One certainly is that the systems that we have are not working well, right? People are really not getting the kind of care they need. Another one, I think especially coming out of the pandemic, really acknowledging [that] social isolation and loneliness as a public health issue. And people are really seeking out opportunities to connect. And that coinciding with the development of the evidence base and with the development of the real understanding or remembering in our human histories that we have always made art. We’ve always made art to connect with one another, to communicate how we feel, to make meaning, to play, to seek out joy and connection, but also a remembering, as a way of making whole, that we’ve been kind of siloing ourselves and our diagnoses or our conditions. And really, art is a way of making oneself whole.

Monica Holt: How beautifully put. So let’s rewind for a minute. How did you get into this work? What is the path that led you to become one of the people building the arts and health field right now?

Aly Maier Lokuta: It’s a long, winding road.

Monica Holt: Great. Here for all of it, all the twists and turns.

Aly Maier Lokuta: Yeah, I don’t remember a time in my life before there was art, and that was a key part of how I enjoyed myself and my life and made friends. Whether it was through dance classes or my school’s music program or art program, I was always really energized by the arts. My mom could give me an easel and an art kit and I could be occupied for hours. Meanwhile, my mom also likes to tell the story of, there used to be this channel called Discovery Health. I don’t think it exists anymore, but they would literally show real time surgeries —

Monica Holt: I remember quickly flipping past that channel because it freaked me out.

Aly Maier Lokuta: So I would literally be eating dinner as a 12-year-old watching open heart surgery. I found it so curious and interesting. And then in my family history, I’ve had different kinds of neurodegenerative disease. And so I’ve also really been interested in brain health and psychology from a really young age. So when it came down to figuring out what to do for college, I wrote my college admission essays around neuroscience and curing Alzheimer’s and seeking a pre-med track. And a semester into my undergraduate career, promptly bait and switched over to the art school. Credit to one of my freshman year roommates who was in art school. And I was like, that looks like way more fun than this biology lab. And I was at the University of Florida and I pursued a BFA in creative photography and really enjoyed the kind of intellectual and conceptual pursuits of photography and of fine arts, and promptly moved to New York to make it as a visual artist and needed to pay rent.

And all the gallery jobs were unpaid internships. And so I was waiting tables to pay rent, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to be doing something different.’ And I was looking into different grad programs, and that’s when I found the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine. And as part of the orientation to what this is, I was like, literally, what is this? Arts in medicine? There’s a place where I could do both? I watched this documentary Still/Here by Bill T. Jones, and I just was like, that is the thing. I’m all in. There’s no looking back. That is my life’s work. And so yeah, I kind of dove in head first and haven’t looked back.

Monica Holt: Haven’t looked back. That’s amazing, being able to pinpoint that moment. And how wonderful. I mean, I don’t think I was aware, for instance, of this master’s program until I was getting to know you more. So I think you’re also a great ambassador for how you can start to look at those pairings of work as you are educating yourself. So then before you came to NJPAC, you were at New York City Health + Hospitals building their arts in medicine program from the ground up, right? And you led the first two years of their community mural project, which was the largest public mural initiative since the WPA era. What did you learn working with the largest public health system in the country after getting this master’s degree, finding this intersection? What was that experience like and what was it like to come back to New York in that type of capacity?

Aly Maier Lokuta: I mean, I was looking for a reason to come back to New York. I’ve always thought of New York as really a home of a place of community that I adore. And Linh Dang, who was leading the program at the time, invited me to work with her to help build this arts in medicine program. Working for New York City Health and Hospitals was an incredible learning opportunity. We had a mandate as a team of three to reach the entire public health system of over 40,000 employees, and I think 1.5 million patients a year. So that was a tall order, but these community mural projects were way of making that work visible and engaging all kinds of community and all kind of definitions of community along the way. And these murals were a way to manifest and make visible the kind of care that went on in this public health system for everyone, the patients, the community, and the healthcare workers themselves.

And I really learned that I love community engaged practice. I think it instilled that as a value to me in my practice. So part of the community mural project were these community paint parties where we invited everyone to have a hand in painting these murals. And as a part of working at 17 health systems and always having a big case of art supplies with me wherever I was going, I’d often have our drivers from Health and Hospitals shuttling me around. I’d be in the Bronx in the morning and in Staten Island in the afternoon. And when we were painting the mural at Metropolitan, I finally convinced one of our drivers to come to the paint party and put in his handiwork. And I swear for months later after the mural was put up and installed, I’d see him in the morning walking into the office and he’d tell me, ‘That’s my trash can!’ He painted this street scene in the metropolitan mural. There’s a little trash can next to the vendor. He’s like, ‘I saw my trash can this morning. That’s my trash can. I painted that trash can.’ There’s this sense of pride and ownership that was so beautiful.

Monica Holt: But also the power of the invitation that you gave.

Aly Maier Lokuta: Exactly

Monica Holt: Explicit permission-giving, explicit invitation, that when we say community, that’s not just lip service.

Aly Maier Lokuta: That means you.

Monica Holt: That means you.

Aly Maier Lokuta: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Monica Holt: At a certain point though, you decided to shift gears and you made the move to NJPAC where you were continuing this work, but in a very different capacity. What was calling you to a performing arts center specifically?

Aly Maier Lokuta: I would say there was, I think, a larger arc from the work I’d been doing previous to Health and Hospitals, around field-building initiatives, white papers, and teaching, and coming at the work from a real kind of theoretical vantage point. And I was really missing doing the work. One of my first jobs in the field was doing bedside and open studio hours as an artist in residence at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. And really getting to work with patients and families, art making and facilitating that one-on-one, which is so powerful for an artist and it helps contextualize our work as artists in different ways. And so I’d gone from that place to this kind of theoretical place, and then I really wanted to be implementing. And in the in-between of Health and Hospitals and NJPAC, I had started a consulting practice. And so Arts in Health Consulting helps with strategic planning or curriculum development around arts in health. And that’s how I found myself consulting with NJPAC in the summer of 2021, is they were looking for someone to set out this strategic vision for what is NJPAC most uniquely suited to do in this space of arts and health? Which culminated in endowment pitches to RRWJBarnabas Health and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and women at NJPAC who together endowed the work in early 2022, which then facilitated me coming on board full-time that summer to lead the work.

Monica Holt: That’s incredible. We think about NJPAC, and we’ve talked about this before on the podcast, as really an anchor institution for Newark. How does understanding the arts and health intersection help strengthen that anchor role in the community?

Aly Maier Lokuta: I think it’s at the core of the work that performing arts centers do, as anchor cultural institutions do. As we really come to understand the influence of engaging in arts and culture, having these spaces and places and artistic works exposed to us or our ability to participate in them really impacts the health and wellbeing of the individuals that come and the communities we serve. And so it really facilitates all of the other functions of an anchor cultural institution if you can look at the work through that lens, how we can drive a healthy thriving community or be an anchor for a healthy, thriving community. And I think that in our role in our arts and wellbeing department, we’ve tried to really focus on being a good steward of resources. If we are a well-resourced institution within Newark and within New Jersey, how can we be a good steward of just funds and resources and knowledge, and how can we share that and lift up the arts and cultural vitality of our community as a whole?

Monica Holt: What are some of the health outcomes that everyday arts programs are already generating? You talked about this a little bit before, but just to give people a sense of maybe some of the information they can share even internally with staff so that you can watch that shift happen from the inside out.

Aly Maier Lokuta: Sure. So I have this slide of Cliff Notes that I use often in my decks and presentations, and the data that I’m about to share isn’t from ‘eight people did this dance class and we found X, Y, Z’ or ’12 people did this improv class and we found X, Y, Z.’ But this is really, really robust data. And what it shows is that for a myriad of health outcomes across the lifespan with a diverse set of modalities — it doesn’t have to be dance or visual arts or et cetera. And here’s the key: across abilities, right? So you don’t have to be good at the arts for them to be good for you — that we see positive health outcomes in every kind of domain. So we see that attending a concert or going to a museum just once or twice a month has a similar protective value to your cognitive health as exercising for an hour or two per week.

So every physician out there will say, don’t stop exercising, but I will say add going to your local museum or add buying those concert or Broadway tickets to your own concept of how you take care of yourself. We see for youth who engage in the arts, we see higher test scores, which we know. We see higher attendance in schools, which we know. But we also see lower levels of social isolation and loneliness. We see lower incidences of substance misuse. We see lower incidences of behaviors that get criminalized in our classrooms. In the public health sphere, there’s a term called ‘upstream drivers of health.’ So these are things that influence your health early on that can have ripple effects throughout. So if you think of someone’s kind of life trajectory, looking back to your youth, what are influences that can drive better health outcomes across the lifespan? And early and continuous exposure to arts and culture and arts engagement is one of those things.

I think that the facts and figures and the Cliff Notes slide go a long way. And sometimes it’s a little bit of an aha moment or maybe a duh moment. Daisy Fancourt, who’s this incredible researcher out of University College London, I’ve heard her call this ‘duh research.’ Of course the arts are good for our health. Are you kidding? Just close your eyes and think for a moment about the last time you were in a theater and the opening notes of a guitar solo or an overture start, and you’re surrounded by community members who are all there for the same reason you are, who are singing the songs out loud. Our brains light up, our bodies light up, our heartbeats sync in moments like that. These are deeply human experiences, and I think we all can think back to a moment where it’s like on stage as a kid in a dance recital or just playing xylophone in your school music room, some moment of joy and connection through the arts.

So sometimes it’s about just pointing to that and saying, do you remember how you felt the last time you engaged in the arts? Well, there’s science behind that now. And all of these benefits continue throughout the lifespan. People who engage in the arts literally live longer, happier, healthier lives. We all know the term lifespan, right? How long you live. And then there’s a newer term called health span. How many of those years are healthy, right? If you live to 100, but you’re only healthy ’til you’re 70… We want the health span to live up to the lifespan. And just recently I heard two different folks using a term for ‘presence span.’

Monica Holt: Interesting.

Aly Maier Lokuta: How often are we really awake? How often are we present? And then a fourth is joy span. How many years are we living a joyful life? And when I think of all four of those domains, the centerpiece is arts and culture. Arts helps us live longer. It helps us live more healthy lives. It helps us be present, and it brings joy. So what better thing to engage in than arts and culture?

Monica Holt: That just filled me with pride. Even just hearing you talk, I should note that you’re a visiting scholar at Rutgers as well, and you co-founded the Arts in Health Research Lab. You are clearly as passionate about the data and research as you are from your artistic impulse. How do you think about those kind of parts of your own brain as you’re going to design programs for the future? How do they interplay together? Because it’s so wonderful to hear you speak very easily in both of these worlds.

Aly Maier Lokuta: They’re the same brain. I think it is so kind of colloquially or socially ingrained that arts are somehow separate from science. But what are artists if not researchers? What is the artistic process if not a scientific process? And what are you missing if you don’t have artists at the table? That sense of curiosity and imagination that work as a skill, right? This kind of sense of ambiguity or comfort in ambiguity. So I’ve really actually worked hard to not try to think of those things as separate components of self, but actually that they’re just all one integrated identity of self.

Monica Holt: That is fabulous. So if I’m someone who’s listening to you beautifully describe what not only this work can achieve, but what its importance can be for the community, but maybe our organization isn’t ready to launch an entire new initiative, what are some suggestions or advice that you would give to an organization that wants to get started, but maybe on a slower curve or path than launching a brand new initiative?

Aly Maier Lokuta: So if you’re an arts and cultural institution, I’ve got good news for you. You’re already doing it. You’re already doing this work by the very nature of the programs that you’re already putting on your stages, that you’re inviting your community to participate in. You’re driving health and wellbeing. It’s as simple as that. It can be as simple as that. And it’s really about talking about it in this language of arts and health and looking at it through the lens of arts and health. And there’s some good resources to be able to help orient yourself to that, whether it’s the University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine and their arts lab research — they’ve got great talking points — or you can look to NJPAC. If you go to njpac.org/well, you find all the information on our arts and wellbeing programs and some kind of facts and figures.

So I would say, one, you’re already doing it, and two, maybe you can get more curious about the ways in which those programs are impacting your community. How are you evaluating the impact or effectiveness already? Is there a question to add to your attendees or to the folks who engage in the programs? Might you ask them, why are you showing up? What is it doing for you? And then start to intentionally ask those questions about, are your programs being effective to make that change or impacting their health or wellbeing? But it’s critically important for arts organizations to provide these pathways to access for folks who do not have them and to discover what are those barriers — whether it’s financial or time, whether they’re structural or cultural barriers — that are getting in the way of arts participation. But also to ask, right? So if you’ve got folks that you’re a new audience that you’re trying to build, are the programs that you’re delivering relevant to them? Are they interesting to them? Are they at times and on days that they can actually attend? What is the barrier in their lives? And then not assuming that you know it.

Monica Holt: Always a good idea to make fewer assumptions and ask more questions. For organizations on the other hand that are ready to create very intentional new programs like ArtsRx or other designed interventions, where do you recommend they start?

Aly Maier Lokuta: I would say start with finding an expert. I am not unique in my expertise in arts in health. There are many, many folks who are really deeply engaged in this work and thinking about how communities, how health and public health organizations, how arts and culture organizations, how governments, city agencies, can all become more engaged in arts in health. And so I would say, put out the RFP and see who answers the call or see who’s the expert in your local community. So find an expert, ask your community, [and] figure out what’s already happening. Where can you partner? Where can you amplify? Because there are no communities without arts.

Monica Holt: What’s next for you and for NJPAC’s work in this area? What are you building towards right now?

Aly Maier Lokuta: Right now, NJPAC is in the middle of building the Cooperman Family Center for Arts Education and Community Engagement across the street from our main campus. It is going to be a beautiful 58,000 square foot building with classrooms and a black box theater and rehearsal spaces, and it will open in 2027. And so right now we’re really in a visioning and strategic planning phase of how we will program that space. So we have five pillars. We’ve got ArtsRx, which we talked about; arts and healthcare programs like Ritual for Return, which is a theater program for formerly incarcerated folks, or the Lullaby Project, a songwriting program for new mothers and families; we’ve got health and wellness fairs. So those are three of the pillars. Then we have our research lab partnership with Rutgers and a program called Access, which is training and professional development for artists and arts organizations. So I would say we’re doing a lot and we’re thinking about how we can do that work better and reach more people through those five initiatives. And where we’re thinking about expanding is really in the creative aging space and how we really look at the Cooperman Center as a place of lifelong engagement in the arts.

Monica Holt: That’s right. Okay. So we’ve come to the quickfire culture section, which is how we end every episode with a few questions. The first is, what is one piece of culture right now that you are currently obsessed with?

Aly Maier Lokuta: Two things. So I guess a book… I just finished reading Project Hail Mary. That’s a great read.

Monica Holt: I’m in the middle of it, so no spoilers, please.

Aly Maier Lokuta: No spoilers. Oh, I’m so glad you’re reading it. I just thought it was so fun. And then Olivia Dean’s new album is just so good.

Monica Holt: Oh, I love that. Okay. If you could go back in time, what live performance or event would you want to be present at?

Aly Maier Lokuta: What came to mind was Marina Abramović’s piece at MoMA. Being able to sit across from her at the table for that performance piece I feel like would’ve been really powerful. And then as a Florida native, I’ve always felt remiss that I didn’t get to see Tom Petty, so I’d love to go back in time and maybe see some of his early work around Gainesville.

Monica Holt: Great answers. Very different and great answers. We love that. So usually we ask ‘what is one free resource in any field that everyone should check out,’ but you’ve mentioned actually a few of these throughout our conversation.

Aly Maier Lokuta: Yeah, I would just say, check out the National Organization for Arts in Health. They’re really working hard to be the place where we can find one another, where we can share ideas and really come together as a community doing this work.

Monica Holt: And then our last question of every podcast is your CI to Eye Moment. So if you could broadcast one message to executive directors, boards of trustees, leadership teams, and staff of thousands of arts organizations today, what would your message be?

Aly Maier Lokuta: It would maybe be to… Let’s try to practice what we preach. Let’s get curious about the systems that we create and how we enable the folks who work with and for us to bring their best selves to engage in the arts, to be well while we’re providing such a valuable service to our community. Arts administrators oftentimes are kind of heads down in producing this work, and I think it’s a really beautiful thing to remember or to be clued in on that this work that you’re doing is actually bringing health to your community.

Monica Holt: Thank you, Ay. Thank you so much for your time. It was so good to catch up and [I] can’t wait to see all that’s ahead.

Aly Maier Lokuta: Likewise.

Monica Holt: Thank you for listening to CI to Eye with Monica Holt. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, please take a moment to rate us or leave a review. A nice comment goes a long way in helping other people discover the show and hear from leaders in the arts and beyond. If you haven’t already, please click the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. We’ve got some pretty incredible episodes coming your way, and I wouldn’t want you to miss them. This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen McConarty and myself, Monica Holt. Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are our incredible designers and video editors. Our music is by whoisuzo. Don’t forget to follow CI on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok for regular content to help you market smarter. You can also sign up for CI’s newsletter at capacityinteractive.com and you’ll never miss an update. And you can always reach out to let us know who you’d like to hear next from on CI to Eye.