LOCAL EVENTS
Cenikor hosts art show at San Marcos Art League
Making art has been known to have healing properties for both the artist creating the work and the audience who experiences the piece. This understanding is what motivated the team at Cenikor to partner with the San Marcos Art League for their third group show Healing Hearts in February. Cenikor is a nonprofit behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment network with a team based in San Marcos. The San Marcos Art League (SMAL) hosts new group shows almost every month where community members can submit work to display and sell. SMAL and Cenikor’s partnership continues to grow stronger after their third art show brought an appreciation to the arts and awareness of substance use, misuse, and recovery.
The common thread of the art show was each artist's relationship to substance use. The call for art encouraged artists, SMAL members and the San Marcos community to submit works of art if their life has been touched and/ or affected by substance use in some form. Many artists used this opportunity to celebrate recovery and to share work that helped them process the complex emotions that come with substance misuse.
Cenikor has been providing drug and alcohol treatment and prevention since 1967 with multiple locations across Texas. One of the programs offered is Project AIM which stands for community awareness, intervention and mobilization. The program focuses on free direct care for adults 18+ where they assess the needs of each individual and provide education to make healthier choices, gain insight and increase coping and resiliency skills. Project AIM also engages in community engagement through their art show partnership with SMAL as well as monthly meetings with the San Marcos Housing Authority. At these meetings the Cenikor team gives presentations about their programming, coping skills and social support with a goal of providing education on mental health and wellness. Additionally Project AIM has partnered with Texas State University to give presentations to the peer health educators organization Healthy Cats which included facts on fentanyl and opioid abuse in Hays county in order to bring awareness. Another successful venture was their National Take Back Day program where they presented education on how to properly dispose of prescription medications whether they're expired or they’re no longer in use. Cenikor has recently developed a partnership with South Side Community Center to provide their services to those most in need in the San Marcos community.
Another focus of Cenikor is their prevention education team which uses evidence based curriculum in schools to teach kids about positive mental health wellness and how to build healthy coping skills.
Cenikor’s partnership with The San Marcos Art League began three years ago and continues to grow stronger every year. The art show was a completely new venture for the Cenikor team but with the support of Nancy Brown and the SMAL team, the third rendition of the Healing Hearts art show was full of entries from all walks of life, all with the common thread of recovery and wellness. “There's often such great conversations that come from those shows,” said Ashlyn Revere, Project AIM Manager. “It kind of allows for that safety and a place where we can start to deconstruct some of the negative stigma that's around recovery and around people who struggled with substance.”
There are no restrictions to who can participate in the annual Healing Hearts show, other than being 18+ since Project AIM’s focus is on an adult demographic. This year the exhibition saw widespread success through their marketing campaign, reaching beyond the 78666 zipcode. ”This year we had someone visiting and participating from Florida because she was here for a business venture and she just came upon it through a friend's Instagram,” said Kathryn Rivera, Community Engagement & Prevention Specialist for Cenikor.
In order to continue to provide quality care and services to the community, Project AIM hosts quarterly Advisory Committee meetings where they update their partners and the public on what projects the team is working on and to provide feedback on where the team can improve. “We want to have community members too, not just our partners who also serve the community as well to hear everyone's voice,” said Kayla Torress, Prevention Specialist for Project AIM.
Cenikor has locations all around Texas to meet the needs of multiple communities but recently in San Marcos the foundation has received funding from the city to provide clinical services in the form of medicated assisted treatments in addition to their prevention programs.
One can learn more about the services provided by Project AIM at their website [email protected] The program is free and nonconfrontational for adults 18+ who want to make positive lifestyle changes whether that's reflecting on drinking habits, quitting vaping, or learning about harm-reduction. Project AIM also provides services relating to food needs, employment and physical help. Save the date for next February's Cenikor Healing Hearts exhibit and keep up to date with the new monthly art shows at the San Marcos Art League at their website at artleaugesmtx.org
