About
MISSION STATEMENT
We are dedicated to improving brain health and mental well-being through the visual arts. By offering interactive, science-informed art programs and workshops, we provide a creative outlet that stimulates the mind, nurtures emotional growth, and strengthens community connections. Our goal is to inspire hope, healing, and resilience through the unifying power of artistic expression. Our initiatives aim to support cognitive development and mental resilience for individuals of various ages and abilities.
FOUNDER
I’m Sia Lakshmi Sampson, the Founder of Have A HeARTS: Showing You Care Through the Arts, which is based in Maryland. The organization officially launched in 2024 for the purpose of combining what matters most to me: community service, brain health, and art. My love for the arts, brain science, and helping others led me to create programs that support neuroscience and health in younger and older populations.
ART MEETS HEALTH
“The arts have the ability to transform you like nothing else. They can help move you from sickness to health, stress to calm, or sadness to joy, and they enable you to flourish and thrive.” — Your Brain on Art, Magsamen and Ross, 2023, p. 246
I started drawing in the 1st grade and eventually came to also love painting. The happiness and calmness these visual arts bring me are unmatched! After learning about art intervention research, I realized the arts go beyond being beautiful to also being useful tools that improve health.
My specific health interests are within neuroscience, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. Understanding how the brain influences behavior and health, as well as helping to treat brain disorders are future goals.
I’ve completed science classes, art classes, and even art therapy training and dementia care certification. Through Have A HeARTS, I am committed to using what I’ve learned about art, health, and the brain to help serve my community!