SAF In the News


Survivors Art Foundation

SAF In the News: Media Archives

November, 1999 – “Art Business News” magazine

“N.Y. Organization Uses Art to Help Trauma Survivors”

By Keith Perkins
ABN Managing Editor

NEW YORK–For Candyce Brokaw, executive director of the Survivors Art Foundation (SAF), it’s all about helping trauma survivors heal through art.

“We designed SAF to envelop all trauma survivors with both mental and physical disabilities,” she said. “Trauma survivors will benefit from the arts as an adjunct outlet for expression of their pain and eventual healing.”

Armed with that belief, Brokaw founded the New York-based organization in 1997 and never looked back. The non-profit organization is committed to empowering visual, literary and performing artists with effective expressive outlets via a web gallery, national exhibitions, outreach programs and publications.

In its two short years, the organization has already organized several exhibitions and been recognized with various prestigious awards. The most recent honor was handed out courtesy of the United Nations. From Dec. 15 through Feb. 28, 2000, the organization will be a part of an exhibit at the United Nations entitled, “Visions of the New Millennium.”

The exhibit will represent the best contributions of children in the areas of painting, photographs and creative writing. As part of the exhibit, SAF was asked to contribute its colorful mobile, which was created last summer during the Kosovo Refugee Out-Reach Project called “Flight to Freedom” at Fort Dix, N.J.

The mobile will be shown in the lobby of the United Nations beginning Dec. 15. Accompanying the mobile will be a photographic study of the children who participated in the project, as well as other children’s works from the Survivors Art Foundation’s Safe Kids Web site.

The organization was also recently nominated for inclusion in the Smithsonian Institution’s Permanent Research Collection. They will be honored at a formal presentation, along with other award recipients, at a Medal Ceremony at the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C., on April 3, 2000.

Accumulating awards, honors and grants are all key to the organization’s growth and success, but Brokaw never loses sight of the foundation’s most important goal, which, as she puts it is “healing through art … art through healing.”

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