A Special Veterans Day Message

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 18:32:20 +0000

A Special Veterans Day Message Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/01/2021 - 14:32

LR: Emily Fasick (Program Assistant), Dr. Niyati Dhokai (Program Director)

Happy Veterans Day! As we honor and celebrate the service of our Veterans and their families, we also look back at the past year and the amazing community we have sustained virtually through the Hylton Center's Veterans and the Arts Initiative. Through countless music and art workshops, we have played guitar and ukulele, taken smartphone photos and videos, and created mixed media. We have not only reflected on our own community's service through the arts, but also inspired others by sharing our work at the Virginia Women Veterans Summit and through the release of an innovative Tele-Arts Engagement Guide. The implementation guide shares how the Initiative created a virtual Ukulele Workshop Series that is inclusive and accessible to our diverse, intergenerational, military-connected community, and provides a template for others to create similar programming in their communities.

As we return to the Hylton Center for hybrid workshops this fall and into 2022, we draw upon our resilience as individuals and especially as a community. As Program Director of the Veterans and the Arts Initiative, I look forward to reflecting on this resilience joyfully through the music of husband-and-wife duo, Michael Trotter and Tanya Trotter of The War and Treaty on Sunday, November 14. The couple first met in 2010 at the aptly titled Spirit of Love festival in Maryland, where their artistic-romantic partnership began. Today, the couple continues to bring their very relatable struggles to their music including Trotter’s battle with PTSD as an Army Veteran. Their music speaks truthfully about their journey, including challenges encountered and the hope that they have sustained.

If you haven't heard about The War and Treaty yet, please read more about them and grab your tickets now! Tickets are free for Veterans and Servicemembers with ID (up to 2 tickets each, must be claimed in-person at the Hylton Center Ticket Office).

I look forward to seeing you at the Hylton Center!

Dr. Niyati Dhokai
Program Director, Veterans and the Arts Initiative, Hylton Performing Arts Center, and Research Associate Professor, College of Visual and Performing Arts

Topics

Hylton Center

veterans and the arts

Veterans Day

Niyati Dhokai

Stacey Schwartz — Tue, 21 May 2019 17:49:08 +0000

Niyati Dhokai Stacey Schwartz Tue, 05/21/2019 - 13:49

Program Director, Veterans and the Arts Initiative; Research Associate Professor

Contact Information

Phone: 703-993-5970

Read About Prof. Dhokai as a 2022 Emerging Scholar

Biography

Dr. Niyati Dhokai is a Research Associate Professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at George Mason University, and she also serves as the Program Director for the Veterans and the Arts Initiative at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. In addition, Dhokai also supports the College of Visual and Performing Arts as a Faculty Fellow for Curricular Innovation.

Having directed the Veterans and the Arts Initiative since its inception as a community-based arts program in support of military-connected people in 2015, Dhokai has grown the Initiative from an annual Veterans Day event to a year-round program that has served over 20,000 people through uniquely designed virtual and in-person workshops, a collaboration with Prince William Public Libraries, and curated concerts and special events.

Dhokai has published research outcomes on the impact of community arts programming for military-connected people as the single or lead author in multiple peer-reviewed, international publications including the Journal of Applied Arts & Health, the Journal of Aging Studies, and MUSICultures. She and her team have also published a manual on virtual arts engagement that was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Overall, Dhokai and her teams have received five contracts to complete work in support of Creative Forces®: NEA Military Healing Arts Network, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Dhokai currently serves on a national-level technical working group in support of Creative Forces® through an invited contract from 2024–2027. This is the fourth national-level working group that Dhokai has been invited to advise on since 2019.

Dhokai has made over 20 presentations of findings from community-based events, including Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda MD, the Soldier and Family Assistance Center at Fort Belvoir, peer-reviewed international academic conferences in ethnomusicology and the health sciences, and at George Mason University events.

In recognition of her work, Dhokai is the 2018 recipient of the Change Maker of the Year award from the Virginia Department of Veterans Services and the 2018 recipient of George Mason University’s Jack Wood Award for Town Gown Relations in the faculty/staff category. Prior to joining the faculty at GMU, she worked with Veterans and Servicemembers recovering from injuries in post-acute neurorehabilitation in the Washington D.C. metro area by designing and facilitating music activities to support community integration. She has a B.A. in Music from George Mason University, and she completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in Music (Ethnomusicology) from the University of Alberta (Canada), where her doctoral dissertation research was supported by a Fulbright grant to study in India.