The mission of Rollins & Associates is to provide solutions for individuals and organizations striving to improve lives through the unique application of the arts in healthcare and education. Through consultation, research, evaluation, project or program development, writing, editing, and publication design, we will work with you to refine your ideas and transform your vision to reality.
Founded in 1988, Rollins & Associates is located in Washington, DC, and provides services locally, nationally, and internationally.
Free Download
Revised Book on Preparing Artists to Work with Hospitalized Children
From Artist to Artist-in-Residence: Preparing Artists to Work in Pediatric Healthcare Settings (2nd ed.) is now available online. As was the initial book published in 1996, this updated edition is designed to help arts administrators and healthcare professionals plan, implement, and evaluate an artists-in-residence training program that prepares artists to work with children who are hospitalized. It details the four step process used to prepare professional artists—musicians, dancers, poets, storytellers, and a variety of visual artists—for employment in Studio G, a pediatric artists-in-residence program launched at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC, in 1993. To download your free copy click here.
Latest Research
Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Intervention that Uses Images and Symbols to Help Children Express Their Feelings
Healthcare experts agree that hospitalization and illness are stressful for everyone, but can be especially so for the developing child. Often the feelings children experience are confusing, difficult, and perhaps too frightening to put into words. Representing these experiences through the use of symbols and images result in the invisible becoming visible through association. The Moon Balloon, a 40-page colorfully illustrated interactive journal, provides an opportunity for children to create their own stories of hope and discovery, enticed by the wonder and magic of hot air balloons and other colorful and playful artistic symbols.
What a Hospital Should Be
Among the many features of childhood is children's sense of powerlessness and lack of control over what happens to them. Perhaps under no other circumstance is this reality more evident than when children are hospitalized. In an effort to explore children's needs, wants, wishes, desires, and hopes when hospitalized, the Studio G artists-in-residence program at Georgetown University Medical Center spearheaded a month-long project that asked hospitalized children to design features of their ideal hospital and create art—drawings, paintings, collages, prints, sculpture, stories, poetry, dance, music—to depict their ideas. To download the book with a chapter (pp. 201–211) about the research, click here.