Creativity

Hospital Arts Outreach

CMOM helps children living with cancer and their families explore, heal and learn through art. Every week, we send our leading educators to the children’s ward of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Cancer Treatment Center. Equipped with a creative curriculum and a sterile selection of supplies, our educators invite patients, their siblings and parents to participate in free, innovative art activities that are fun and educational. By combining an academic focus with fun art activities, the art-making program makes the hospital setting more livable, stimulating and fun for kids coping with illness and allows them to feel like a “normal” kid for a while.

After-School Programs

CMOM provides after-school enrichment programs to more than 35,000 children. Each week CMOM runs 50-80 different programs off-site, mostly in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx. Over the last eight years, CMOM has developed a unique curriculum and educational approach that compliments and enriches the work of schools to meet performance standards in science, art and literacy.

PlayHelps

In response to Hurricane Katrina, CMOM created Play Helps™, a program that brought relief in the form of play to children and families in New Orleans impacted by the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Based on CMOM’s PlayWorks™ curriculum and launched in partnership with the Louisiana Children’s Museum in December 2006, Play Helps™ was conducted within two large geodesic domes filled with wonderful play and learning opportunities. The domes were set up on the grounds of the Andrew Jackson School in St. Bernard Parish. Classes from the elementary school regularly visited the Play Helps™ domes over the course of a three-month period. On weekends and holidays, community groups visited Play Helps™ free of charge at the Louisiana Children’s Museum. Families were encouraged to participate in open-ended play, a toy-making workshop and special activities in the Art Studio.

Play Helps™ was presented through the support of the Toy Industry Foundation, designed by the Children’s Museum of Manhattan and coordinated by the Association of Children’s Museums.

A modified, locally-run and supported version called Play Power continues to be transformative for the Louisiana Children’s Museum and greater New Orleans community, delivering programs on a daily basis to five school sites.