Art and activism came together in Lucas, Kansas, as the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas wrapped up its five-city community organizing tour on July 29.

“Art is great at community building,” Alliance executive director April Holman said after 15 local and regional residents created textile collages that will become the elements of a symbolic, stitched map of Kansas. The artwork, titled "Mapping the Gap," will tour Kansas public spaces, giving the Alliance opportunities to educate, inform, and advocate for Medicaid expansion.

Kansas is one of only 10 states in the nation that have not signed on to receive federal funds that would close the Medicaid-insurance gap for 150,000 Kansans.

“It’s our first art project, a living piece of advocacy,” said Masara Al-Sharieh, community organizer for the Alliance. Art is a way to “not only be how we spread our message, but building and rebuilding community in the places we visit," she said.

Textile artist Malissa Long of Haysville, Kansas, designed the process that invited participants to create fabric collages to symbolically convey some aspect of their own health care or the health care of loved ones. “Use thicker fabric if you were insured during your experience, and use thinner fabric for the moments when your insurance was not as sure,” Long explained. 

Long aligned her project’s theme of bridging gaps in health care with her own story. While she and her husband were uninsured as they worked part time while going to college in Kansas, she was diagnosed with cancer. They made too much income to qualify for Medicaid, but did not have employers who offered health insurance. A program for women Long’s age with her specific cancer picked up the expenses for her treatment. During that time, she stitched two imaginative abstract images – one that depicts her cancer cells, and another that shows therapeutic radiation attacking them.

"It started me down the road toward my artistic work," Long said.

In Lucas, participants came from Great Bend, Hoisington, Ellsworth, and Lucas to the classroom at Switchgrass Co-op, the co-operative artist gallery, coffee stand, and thrift shop on Main Street. Lucas participants’ collages will join those contributed by participants in Liberal, Wichita, Kansas City, and Pittsburg. Long will assemble them on a 2.5 by 5-foot map of the state. A booklet of participants’ health care stories and their names will accompany each exhibit.

Policy and advocacy specialist Marissa Alcantar shared data about Medicaid, health insurance, and the effects of the federal budget reconciliation bill signed into law on July 4. Alcantar said Kansans in the coverage gap are low-income working adults, caregivers for young children and family members with disabilities, people with chronic disabilities, students and veterans.

“Congress passed a budget reconciliation bill with the largest Medicaid cuts in history,” Alcantar said. These cuts include mandatory work requirements, eligibility redeterminations every six months, and other measures.

“Doing this work is really encouraging, especially in a place like this,” Alcantar said. “People are still passionate about this issue, which feeds me. I wanted to make sure I was in a space to work toward that solution.” 

“We came to Lucas to finish up the event because it’s an arts town,” Al-Sharieh said. “Our workshop here communicates the need to protect and expand Medicaid. Art is a form of communication we can use.”

Switchgrass co-founder Lacie Austin welcomed the opportunity to host the workshop in the co-op's classroom space. “Our mission is ‘art is for all,’ and that includes people who want to make the world better,” Austin said. “I’m a big believer in doing what you can, and to advocate on the state level that we don’t normally have the opportunity to do.”

Switchgrass’ free summer art classes for children are also a site for distributing 30-35 lunches and weekend food bags for children to take home every week. The meals are made and packaged by Feeding the Children of Central Kansas in Wilson.

“There are assumptions about Lucas because we get a lot of the spotlight,” Austin said of the collaborative art space which also provides summer nutrition. “The majority of that is what we’ve done for ourselves. We receive help because we do so much.”

Workshop participant Tina Davis of the Ellsworth County Medical Center understands the importance of both health care and art. Davis runs the Ellsworth Area Arts Council and works in hospital administration. She is concerned about the difficulty of enrolling in health insurance programs and discussed with Holman ways to access information to help patients. Davis told Austin “how inspiring” Switchgrass is. 

“It goes to show how art reaches and touches everything,” Austin said. “People in the medical field drive 45 minutes to an hour to tell a story with art.” 

Lori Brack is a writer and arts worker based in Lucas, Kansas. She is the author of three books of poems and many essays in anthologies and journals. Links to her writing and full bio are at www.loribrack.com.

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