LOS ANGELES — New York Times bestselling author, artist, and healer Patrisse Cullors has been named the inaugural Visiting Senior Fellow and Artist-Healer in residence for the HEARTS Program (Health Education through Arts and Research in Thriving Spaces) at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. The six-month fellowship begins July 2026 and brings monthly group programming to multiple Los Angeles constituencies through partnerships with The Broad Museum, the Hammer Museum, LA County Department of Arts and Culture,  and Crenshaw Dairy Mart.

“Healthcare workers, civic leaders, and the communities they serve are carrying unprecedented levels of burnout, moral injury, and grief — and Western medicine often lacks the tools to address the spiritual and collective dimensions of that crisis,” said Patrisse Cullors. “This fellowship is an invitation to engage aesthetics not just as something beautiful, but as something to actively practice inside the institutions and communities that need it most.”

Four constituencies, four spaces, one practice

Beginning July 2026, Patrisse will facilitate three groups per month across four constituencies, with venues rotating to meet each group where it lives:

Civic leaders — working from The Broad Museum, LA County Department of Arts and Culture, and the Hammer Museum with downtown accessibility for community leaders across LA County.

Nonprofit leaders facing burnout — anchored at Crenshaw Dairy Mart, a community-rooted cultural space whose location and ethos align with the constituency it serves.

Faculty, staff, and students in the Department of Psychiatry and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine — held on the UCLA campus, embedded in the daily life of the institution.

The general LA public — rotating across all partner venues so that geography is never the reason someone can’t participate.

Summer programming launches in July at locations in Altadena and Topanga, with institutional partner programming coming beginning in July in partnership with Connect LA and Altadena Rising.

A practice held with industry leaders

Each group will be co-facilitated by Patrisse Cullors  and a leading practitioner from the field of healing, somatics, and artist-led community work. Confirmed collaborating facilitators include Sean Sparks, LMFT; April Soto, M.D. of Lalim Health; Staci K. Haines, Somatics practitioner and author of The Politics of Trauma; artist Autumn Breon, and Noni Limar, creative and healer. Each group will draw on practices from Cullors’ forthcoming book, We Make the World, to be published by HarperOne in November 2026.

About Patrisse Cullors

Patrisse Cullors is a multidisciplinary artist, healer, and New York Times bestselling author working at the intersection of art, healing, and community organizing in Los Angeles. Her practice spans textile, sound, video, and immersive installation, and is rooted in a theory of change she calls abolitionist aesthetics: the conviction that the aesthetics of abolition will and do transform our worlds, and that aesthetics must be engaged as a practice, not consumed as a surface.  She recently completed an Artist and Healer residency at the Skirball Cultural Center where she brought together Black and Jewish leaders for a dynamic dialogue series. Her residency will culminate with a museum exhibition at Skirball, in October of 2026. Her forthcoming book, We Make the World, will be published by HarperOne in November 2026.

About the HEARTS Program

Under the leadership of Dr. Eraka Bath, professor of psychiatry and Assistant Dean for Faculty Initiatives, The HEARTS Program (Health Education through the Arts and Research in Thriving Spaces) at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior explores the effective use of narrative and storytelling, media, and creative arts to stimulate support, sharing, and reflection among stakeholders, increasing coping and compassion for severe mental illness and other mental health conditions. The HEARTS program, situated within the UCLA Department of Psychiatry, Office of Inclusive Excellence, is an umbrella to catalyze and connect the decades of arts and health efforts from various faculty and staff, such as the Mindful Music Series started in 2014 by Dalida Arakelian and later revitalized post-pandemic by the late Dr. Robert Bilder and Ethel Roxas, California Arts and Disability Resource Center by Dr. Olivia Raynor, the Media and Medicine for Communities (MMC) and the Healing and Education through the Arts (HEArts) program by Dr. Ken Wells.  The HEARTS program will also include a focus on healthcare worker wellbeing via arts.  “Healthcare worker wellbeing is a public health priority. Healthcare workers are facing unprecedented levels of burnout and compassion fatigue. This program is designed to leverage the arts, creative expression and community partnerships for our collective wellbeing.  The arts are a necessary prescription for our community, and this program begins to address this gap.”