Insights

02 10 2017

We are delighted to announce that we have recently completed a volunteer project for Boston-area veterans: The SNAFU Review – An Anthology of Prose, Poems, and Artwork.

When Laura Bajor from the Boston VA came to our offices with a trunk full of unique, handcrafted artwork, including wood cutouts, murals, carved-wood poems, and airy pencil sketches, we were so fortunate to see the creative output of an innovative alternative therapy program for veterans, started right here in the Boston area. One look at the deeply moving and often raw pieces, and our president and CEO Bob George, a Marine veteran himself, immediately knew we had to do justice to these testaments to heroism and help to spread the word about the Boston VA’s pioneering work by publishing this art in a beautiful book.

The program originated when VA therapists realized they needed to do something different— “something creative, something that veterans will want to come to and look forward to,” according to the VA staff. The Creative Expressions group was born, and after a 2013 grant was awarded, it grew into the VA Boston Creative Expressions of Recovery Open Studio (CREOS) program, offering veterans a safe environment in which to express themselves. The program flourished. Some veterans who had been silent for years starting telling their stories using poetry, paintbrushes, or old-fashioned storytelling. The therapists and the veterans themselves started noticing this was useful not just for those veterans who were drawn to the new program right away, but also for those on the sidelines, who learned something about themselves as they saw what others were creating and saw how the creative process was helping to recreate lives.  

“The men and women of our military are rarely credited for their creativity and insight," said Laura Bajor. "On the surface, a lifestyle that demands dressing, marching, and fighting by the numbers doesn’t appear to involve much in the way of independent thought. On deeper examination, however, there are few acts more requiring of creativity and insight than keeping body and soul intact through both the chaos of combat zones and the stultifying bureaucracy that is garrison life.”

One of the hallmarks of the program is that the veterans are in full control; it is a cooperative environment in which veterans have a stake in operations. “We’ll have to see what direction the veterans choose,” says Program Director Grishelda Hogan. As we got to work turning the veterans’ artwork, prose, and poetry into a stunning, richly colored book, we stayed true to this concept. As we took the book’s design through different iterations, the VA team and veterans were a big part of the approval process. 

To photograph the artwork for the book, we brought in Nick Mills, a former U.S. Army combat photographer and frequent contributor to StratComm book projects. Bob George also reached out to his longtime friend, Captain Thomas J. Hudner, Jr., a distinguished Medal of Honor recipient who, with a message written especially for the book, took the opportunity to salute the VA health care providers and the perseverance and creativity of the veterans they serve.

In addition to the printed book, we also created an e-book (.epub and .mobi) version so that the book can be distributed online, and downloaded to Kindles and other e-readers.

Though the book has been published, the process goes on for the veterans, who continue to meet and discuss how to spread the word about the book and the program at large. We thank Laura, Grishelda, and all of the veterans we’ve been honored to work with, who have made it their mission to make lasting connections with and for veterans.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy

That, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”

But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when

the guns begin to shoot;

An’ it’s Tommy, an’ Tommy

That, an’ anything you please;

An Tommy ain’t a bloomin fool –

You bet that Tommy sees!

—Rudyard Kipling

AUTHOR

Julia Enescu

Project Manager at StratComm