Children's Healing Art Project

CHAP'S has created our own Animation Camp (funded by Spirit Mountain Community Fund) - complete with cameras, laptops & one-on-one instruction with trained teaching artists - to bring to children at Doernbecher Children's Hospital and Legacy Emanuel Children's Hospital.

Animation Camp is offered in hospital playrooms, and is hugely popular on the Oncology Ward at Doernbecher Children's Hospital. Cancer treatments often lower the immune system, and children can spend days, weeks or months in isolation during treatment. As in all CHAP art we find ways to engage, encourage and inspire our young artists in the hospitals. CHAP teaching artists bring Bedside Animation Camp to these children one-on-one in their rooms.

The narrative process of a creating a short animated film enables children to tell their stories and release the stress of hospitalization through art. Young artists start by creating a cast of characters - from imaginary creatures from outer-space to a talking toothbrush -- out of modeling clay, googly eyes and other supplies in the CHAP Mobile Art Cart.

From creating a storyboard, operating the camera, to recording the voiceover, to editing a movie on a Mac laptop, our young artists learn all the ins and outs of making a movie. CHAP's teaching artists then hand over the final cut so the young "directors" can showoff their very own movies on DVD!