Finding Voice and Vision: Empowering Veterans through Music, Expressive Writing, and Film

Who We Are

Finding Voice and Vision is a unique art therapy program providing creative guidance and camaraderie to veterans battling PTSD and trauma. We are a veteran-serving arts organization led by working professional artists — composer Kurt Erickson, poet and Iraq War veteran Brian Turner, and Tony-nominated actor and director Will Chase.

Finding Voice and Vision received a California Arts Council Impact Grant in 2025 to partner with San Francisco's LIEDER ALIVE! and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Inspired by Brian Turner's iconic 2005 publication Here, Bullet, the creative team has created a unique multi-disciplinary approach that transforms veteran art through multiple mediums while providing the space necessary for storytelling that heals and enriches our lives.

With support from an August 2026 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), our programs expand to serve veteran communities affiliated with the San Francisco VA Medical Center, Concord Vet Center, and veterans from across the country.

From Poem to Art Song to Short Film to Veteran Art Therapy Programs

What We Do

We are artists who believe that creativity and human connection can heal. Each week we gather online to offer creative seed ideas — sparks that veterans carry into their own writing, music, film, or any form they choose. In person we give that work a public home, and we step onto the stage beside them.

We share the stage as equals.

What We Value

HUMAN CONNECTION

The work begins between people. Connection is what we make — and what we protect.

CREATIVITY

We offer the spark — a seed idea. The artist supplies the truth that grows from it.

HEALING

Art gives an experience a shape it can be carried in. That shaping is where healing lives.

IDENTITY

Our identity opens a door. Nothing in it should feel like a wall, a gate, or a uniform.

History

It all started with poet Brian Turner writing in his notebooks.

Soon after returning from his tour of duty in 2004, Turner published his firsthand poetic observations as Here, Bullet, an award-winning collection that quickly brought his work to international attention. Over the past two decades, he has been profiled by major media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC, while building an extensive career as an author, educator, and advocate for veterans.

Fast-forward to the mid-2010s.

During her morning commute, soprano Heidi Moss Erickson heard Turner reading his poetry and interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. She immediately bought the book for composer Kurt Erickson and told him “You have to set these to music!!” In 2018, Erickson did exactly that, turning four of Turner’s poems into the 18-minute song cycle Here, Bullet, a work commissioned by a consortium of 25 singers on three continents. Despite the disruption of the pandemic, the work went on to win First Prize in the 2020 NATS Art Song Composition Competition, inspire master’s and doctoral dissertations, and receive international performances and presentations at veteran-focused events.

In 2022, the work caught the attention of Tony-nominated actor and director Will Chase, who approached the team about transforming Here, Bullet into a short film. This new collaboration expanded the project beyond the concert hall and toward a broader model of artistic engagement and veteran outreach. Drawing on their shared experiences, the artists developed a three-month arts-based therapeutic program in collaboration with San Francisco’s LIEDER ALIVE! to work with veterans and mental-health workers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

The online program meets weekly and explores how poetry, music, film, and facilitated art-making can create meaningful opportunities for reflection, connection, and post-traumatic growth. Creative prompts focus on resilience, identity, memory, and the experience of trauma - participants are invited to create, reflect, and share their own work in a supportive environment. The program is free and culminates in a public presentation designed to foster connection, recognition, and greater community awareness.

Separately, Erickson extends this work through suicide-prevention advocacy in Solano County, speaking to civic organizations and bringing music-and-mental-health programming to colleges and universities in the United States and abroad.

More than a workshop, the program offers veterans an opportunity to explore their experiences through art and reclaim their stories on their own terms.

PARTNERS & ADVISORY COUNCIL

LIEDER ALIVE! - San Francisco Performing Arts organization
San Francisco VA Medical Center
Concord Vet Center
Solano Vet Center Outstation
Vianney Mugabo - Friends of Rwanda Association (Director)
Heidi Moss Erickson - Speaker, Scientist, Soprano
Lori Espinosa - Solano County Suicide Prevention Program Director

SELECTED OUTREACH & PRESENTATION EVENTS

• Veteran Art Live Performance & Presentation at San Francisco Veterans Building - April 2026

• Keynote Talk at International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day (Fairfield, CA) - November 2025

• Presentation at Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing Conference (Melbourne, Australia) - July 4, 2025

• Hartt School of Music (Hartford, Connecticut) - April 2025

• Solano College Veterans Resource Center (Fairfield, CA) sponsored talk and performance - April 2024

• Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY) with poet Brian Turner at the National Veteran Resource Center - October 2024

• Solano Board of Supervisors (Fairfield, CA) talk - September 2023

• Cosumnes River College (Sacramento, CA) in a veteran curated event at the CRC Art Gallery - October 2019