Mental Health During COVID-19: Community-Based Arts Addressing African American Experiences

Focusing on African American experiences, this article explores the pursuit of mental health as a human right during COVID-19, and the capacity of arts-based community engagement initiatives to historicize and deepen such efforts. Given the syndemic nature of COVID-19 health inequities, this research explores the arc of VITAL Health and My Life Matters projects in their engagement with mental health injustices and freedom struggles that respond to race-based traumatic stress and intergenerational trauma in the United States. With performances and workshops reaching thousands of audience members in North Carolina and nationally, these programs have centered Black mental health, offering creative, history-engaged opportunities for intra- and interpersonal connection and reflection. Through discourse analysis and critical ethnography, we propose that cultural performance initiatives can expand public engagement with mental health resources during overlapping public health crises by gathering people to (a) honor grief and mutually envision change, (b) host dialogic connection for truth-telling and imagination, (c) communally embody supportive care and emancipatory engagement