In 2015, New Mexico Arts began to explore the relationships between veterans, military families, government agencies, and non-profit arts organizations that believe in the healing power of art and creativity. With guidance from the National Endowment for the Arts and Americans for the Arts, a series of facilitated roundtables across the state were held with representatives of the arts community and the military community. Along with the round tables, a survey was distributed, and other Veteran related information resources were collected and compiled. The Arts & The Military program also supported community building arts activities such as the Love Armor Project, a collaboration with Keshet Dance and EXIT12 dance company and a Veteran’s Songwriting Project among others.

The covid pandemic paused all public programming in 2020-2022 but staff initiated a collaboration with the Art in Public Places program to produce two series of posters featuring art works from veteran artists dedicated to the state’s first responders and front-line pandemic personnel. In 2022, a collaboration with the State Library system produced a resource library that included both electronic and hard copy texts focused on Arts and Healing topics for veterans. These books continue to be available via online library access as well as hard copy books in over 100 libraries located across the state of New Mexico.