Children’s Art Project Has Been Improving the Lives of Children with Cancer for 30 Years

by Karen Stuyck

David is nine years old and receiving treatment for osteosarcoma at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, where he also goes to school. His picture “Stick Flowers” appears both on a notecard and in a children’s book, Our Seasons, produced by M. D. Anderson’s Children’s Art Project.

Jaime is a 13-year-old with Ewing’s sarcoma who also attends M. D. Anderson’s in-hospital classroom while receiving treatment. Jaime has two designs this year in the annual holiday card collection: a praying angel and a shepherd and lamb. In addition, his watermelon art appears in the Children’s Art Project’s Alphabet Garden book, and his picture of an apple heart is on notecards, a note cube, a list pad, and magnets.

These young artists are part of a long line of patients who have contributed to, and benefited from, the Children’s Art Project. In 1973, an Anderson Network volunteer remarked that a young patient’s artwork was “pretty enough to be a Christmas card,” and the rest, as they say, is history. At first, the project focused only on holiday cards, but now it produces a variety of gifts and cards featuring original art from young patients.

Over the past 30 years, the Children’s Art Project has raised more than $17 million for patient-focused programs at M. D. Anderson. This year, profits from the sale of the project’s products will fund $1.5 million of programs: summer camps for young patients and their siblings, a ski trip for amputees, teachers’ salaries and other expenses for the in-hospital classroom, and college and graduate scholarships that so far have helped more than 400 patients earn college degrees.

“The purpose of the Children’s Art Project is to make life better for children with cancer by funding programs that benefit the patients’ educational, emotional, and recreational needs,” said Shannan A. Murray, executive director of the project. To that end, the project funds music and art therapy, vocational training for young adults, and the salaries of six child-life specialists who provide therapeutic play activities and emotional support to young patients.

Artists have been as young as two years old and as old as 18, Murray said. This year, 44 different designs by children will be featured on various products, which now include children’s books, calendars, cards for all seasons, journals and address books, Christmas tree ornaments, T-shirts, jewelry, neckties, and scarves.

Children create most of the art during weekly art classes at the hospital. If a child is too sick to come to class, the art teacher will go to the child’s bedside, Murray said. Brothers and sisters of patients also may attend the class because “we know cancer affects the whole family, and siblings are affected along with the patients,” she said.

The Children’s Art Project staff never suggests specific subjects for the young artists to draw; instead, they comb through hundreds of designs made by the children. If a child’s drawing is not picked one year, it could still be used later on.

The artists whose designs are used on a card or gift receive honorariums as well as samples of all the products containing their artwork. Most important, they receive the knowledge that they have helped their fellow patients, and themselves, through a difficult time.

For more information on this topic or for questions about M. D. Anderson’s treatments, programs, or services, call askMDAnderson at (877) MDA-6789.

Other articles in OncoLog, December 2003 issue:

• On the Move: Efforts Under Way to Improve Outcomes for Patients with Renal Cancer
• Art Therapy Helps Children Affected by Cancer Express Their Emotions
• DiaLog: When a Parent Is Sick: Talking to Children about Cancer

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