SaludArte is a public art and community health program in Tucson, Arizona, born from a partnership between the Pima County Health Department and the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona. The program brings together people with lived experience of a particular health challenge (in its first iteration, the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the second, substance use) and pairs them with local artists to co-create temporary public art installations that reflect their stories, their grief, and their resilience. The result is something rarer than most public health interventions: art that communities actually recognize themselves in, and the feeling of being truly seen and understood.

Samaj Studio has served as the human-centered design lead across two iterations of SaludArte, designing the experiences and activities through which community panelists share their stories with artists and each other. This means creating the conditions - the prompts, the activities, the arc of each session - for people to go somewhere real and then hand that material to an artist meaningfully. In 2023, five community groups across Pima County worked with five local artists to produce installations unveiled at neighborhood celebrations that fall. The 2025 program deepened the model, centering the experiences of people with lived experience of substance use.

Here is a short film about the project and a feature from Arizona PBS about the program.