Tess Leak

Case Studies

Case Studies

These case studies showcase examples of diverse arts and health projects which are characterised by clear artistic vision, goals and outcomes, and are delivered by professional artists.

Case Studies

Protected: Harbour Playwrights

The ‘Harbour Playwrights’ is a creative writing programme specifically designed for people affected by memory challenges who access the HSE's Memory Harbour service. The programme aims to bring memory issues out of the health realm, directly into a community space, where health, arts and community can intersect and stigma around memory issues can be reduced.

Case Studies

Elders of the Blackwater

Stories from The Elders of the Blackwater Catchment is a Creative Communities project with members of Cluain Dara Day Care Centre, Fermoy and artist Julie Forrester, exploring personal chronicles about what it means to live by the River Blackwater. 

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Feeling Seen, Heard & Valued: 20 years of Arts in Renal Dialysis at UHW

The Arts Programme in Renal Dialysis supports patients in the Renal Dialysis Unit at University Hospital Waterford to engage in creative activity during their long hours of treatment. Established in 2006, the programme currently engages patients through creative writing, poetry, music, art, photography, film and storytelling.

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Art of Life

Art of Life is a Shared Island project that aims to normalise conversations amongst older people around death and dying, using creative approaches. Led by Creative Cavan (Cavan County Council), the project was delivered in Counties Cavan, Fermanagh and Tyrone during 2024 and 2025.

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Mo Cheantar Féin (My Own Area)

Mo Cheantar Féin is a HSE Per Cent for Art Commission of 16 paintings that are permanently displayed in Kilbarrack Health Centre, Dublin 5, a primary healthcare clinic. Artist Paul MacCormaic aimed to shine a spotlight on local places of interest and beauty, which are often overlooked and passed by every day.

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Mending HeArts

Mending HeArts is a participatory arts and health programme designed to support people recovering from cardiac and stroke-related conditions. Through creative workshops led by professional artists, the programme offers a space for expression, connection, and emotional wellbeing during recovery across Galway City and County.

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Mapping the Space of Dementia

Mapping the Space of Dementia brings together scientists, clinicians, care workers, care partners, people living with dementia and an artist, to explore how we position and locate ourselves in our world. Artist Mick O'Kelly uses brain imaging technology to capture cognitive difference, which is then mapped onto stained glass and installed in the home environments of participants.

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The Blooming Minds Club

The Blooming Minds Club is a creative arts hub in County Louth for young people experiencing mental health difficulties. Youth-led and artist-supported, the club was established in 2023 at Creative Spark Dundalk, in collaboration with Louth Meath Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), artist and art therapist Jenny Slater, and local professional artists.

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Arts in Residential Care: Creative responses to grief and loss

Irish Hospice Foundation launched the fourth round of its Seed Grant programme in 2024, this time focusing on creative exploration and responses to grief and loss in residential care. Awardees included activity co-ordinators, artists, clinicians, educators, and academics, aligned with nursing homes in Limerick, Louth, Clare, Cavan, Donegal and Dublin. 

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The Dandelion Clocks

The Dandelion Clocks is a series of five sculptures by Remco de Fouw commissioned by Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) to welcome people to the National Children’s Hospital of Ireland, CHI at Connolly and CHI at Tallaght. They are part of CHI’s ambitious programme of public art which aims to create moments of magic and wonder that connect to the child in all of us.

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In Other Words

In Other Words is a 10-week acting and creative expression programme led by actor and filmmaker Luke Corcoran in partnership with Aiséirí addiction services in Waterford. Now in its second year, the programme engaged 10 participants from the Aiséirí Progression Programme in weekly workshops, culminating in the creation of five short films.

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The Curiosity Project

Olivia Hassett was commissioned as the inaugural Meath Foundation Artist in Residence (2022 - 2024) to research, develop and create a permanent artwork for Tallaght University Hospital. Hassett selected Dermatology for her specific area of interest after a response to a callout to TUH Departments. The project resulted in the creation and delivery of two artworks: Diaphony (permanent sculpture) and I Am Diaphony (live performance).

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Good Grief

Good Grief was a research pilot exploring creative ritual as a tool for self-soothing in the second year of bereavement. Taking place weekly across new locations in Wexford and Waterford, the project brought the same group of adults together to gently process grief through movement, making, and reflection. The project was led by Waterford City and County Council and Wexford County Council, with funding from Creative Ireland.

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School of Generational Storytelling

School of Generational Storytelling was a year-long interdisciplinary project by artist Eamon O’Kane, supported by artist Chelsea Canavan. Commissioned by The Model and set within six care homes throughout Sligo, the project reflected on how we share knowledge across time, how creative practice can support wellbeing, and how relationships between individuals, disciplines, and institutions can be cared for through art.

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Anam Beo – 20 years of creativity and care in the Midlands

Anam Beo is an arts collective that has delivered an arts and health programme for older people in care and community settings in Offaly since 2005. Anam Beo’s 20th Anniversary Project is a region-wide arts and health celebration in the Midlands showcasing two decades of groundbreaking work, where art and health intersect to tell powerful stories of resilience, connection, and change.

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Cut from the Same Cloth

Cut from the Same Cloth is a project initiated by University College Dublin Conway Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Research, seeking to build trust and foster new connections between women and girls from minority communities in Ireland and biomedical health researchers. Stories and experiences from a series of gatherings exploring 'the fabric of our lives' have culminated in a touring exhibition by artist and tapestry weaver Lorna Donlon.

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Cavan Singers – Celebrating Forty Years of Community Singing

Cavan Singers began life as a community choir on Valentine's Day 1984. To celebrate our 40 years of singing together, we conducted an informal survey of members to find out what it means to be part of a community choir. What emerged was a triad of interconnected themes - Music, Community and Self - and a realisation that singing together over a sustained period was having a profound effect on our individual mental and emotional wellbeing.

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Tiny theatre adventures for babies and children with complex needs at hospital bedsides in Dublin

Theatre maker Anna Newell ignites the imagination of our youngest audiences through responsive, multisensory theatre adventures. Since autumn 2023, Anna has been bringing bedside performances to babies and children with complex needs in Dublin hospitals, as part of an ongoing collaboration with Children's Health Ireland.

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The Gift of Connection for Christmas by Mike Hanrahan & Westport Men’s Shed

When Irish Hospice Foundation and Irish Men’s Sheds invited musician Mike Hanrahan to join forces with Westport Men’s Shed, the brief was simple. Get everyone sharing favourite songs and talking about experiences of grief and loss. What resulted took everyone’s breath away. A creative collaboration that produced a gorgeous song ‘Wishing You Were Here’ for Christmas 2023 that’s still going strong.

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Compassionate Culture Networks Across Munster

Irish Hospice Foundation have been developing a Compassionate Culture Network across Ireland since 2021. These are spaces facilitated by artists for people to gently explore loss and how compassion connects through a variety of creative practices. Initially supported by Creative Ireland, additional support from Rethink Ireland’s Impact Fund for Munster enabled expansion across Munster in 2023.

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A Dive in Line – Art & Parkinson’s Disease

A Dive in Line showcases a yearlong exploratory project in West Cork between six individuals experiencing Parkinson’s disease / Parkinsonism, healthcare staff in Dunmanway Community Hospital and Day Care Centre, and participatory artist / speech & language therapist Áine Rose Connell. The project formed part of the Arts for Health Partnership Programme West Cork.

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Making My Mark

Making My Mark is a pilot art programme with renal dialysis patients at the BBraun Wellstone Wexford Renal Care Centre. Delivered by artist Kate Murphy, the programme ran from February to June 2024, and culminated in a public exhibition of patient artwork.

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The Vitruvian: Uncovering The Layers Of Cancer

Artist Vincent Devine, cancer researchers at UCD Conway Institute, and patient partners with a lived experience of cancer worked collaboratively to integrate art and science. From these conversations, Devine created a powerful visual representation that offers a glimpse into the journey of cancer, from its molecular origins to its profound effects on an individual’s wellbeing.

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DL. BRIDGE Inclusive Dance Club

Inclusive Dance Club is a creative dance project for children and young people with additional needs, exploring dance with a team of professional dance artists in a calm and safe environment. The project forms part of DL.BRIDGE, a Dance Limerick programme led by choreographer Katy Hewison.

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A Bright Light

A Bright Light was a collaborative book project with children of families who foster, about their experiences of having foster siblings. The project was a partnership between Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership and the Foster Care Resource Service Sligo, Leitrim, and West Cavan Area. Creative sessions with children and young people from families who foster took place in 2022 in Sligo. 

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Storytelling through Weaving

The Storytelling through Weaving project was designed and delivered by wellbeing artist Lucy Hyland and participants from Headway in Cork, a support service for people affected by stroke and Acquired Brain Injury (ABI). Participants created individual weaves and the project culminated in a shared woven wall hanging as a visual account of their recovery from ABI and stroke.

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Artists in Residence in Service to People at End of Life

The arts and cultural engagement in all their forms help people of all ages explore and articulate loss, death, dying, and grief. Since Irish Hospice Foundation’s Arts and Cultural Engagement programme began in 2021, we’ve focused mainly on the bereaved and grieving. In 2023, we trialled an Artists in Residence in Service to People at End of Life project.

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Songlines

Songlines brought together artists and people living with dementia and cognitive impairment to discuss favourite poems and songs in four care settings in Waterford and Wexford. A series of workshops in 2023 drew out memories, and resulted in the creation of new work, which was performed by artists, residents, and staff at celebratory live performances as part of Festival in a Van. 

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Creative Carers in West Cork

Creative Carers is a community-based strand of the Arts for Health Partnership Programme in West Cork, initiated in 2022. The programme creates access to engage with the arts for and with family carers, taking place at carers' homes, in arts spaces and in community settings across the region.

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Music Exploration Programme at Wexford Mental Health Association

Exploring the role of music in mental health recovery for individuals attending community mental health services and those in residential settings in County Wexford, the programme is funded as part of the Arts Ability Programme, a partnership with the HSE Mental Health Services and Wexford County Council Arts Department.

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Common Ground

Participatory artist and maker Ciara Harrison worked with a group of young people who access the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in Waterford. During the summer of 2022, they embroidered, painted, wrote, and explored many different craft and artistic mediums together.

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From the Birches to What’s the Story?

Visual artist Rozzi Kennedy began collaborating with older people in County Louth care settings in 2019 as part of a sequence of An Táin Arts Centre outreach projects. The projects were adapted throughout the Covid-19 pandemic with changing government guidelines, and further developed after restrictions lifted.

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Bridging the Imagination

Visual artist Sharon Dipity collaborated with a group of older people in Skibbereen Community Hospital in 2022 to explore task-based performance art around the theme of bridges, supported by an Arts Council Agility Award. The award afforded Sharon vital time for experimentation as part of sustaining creativity in long-term participatory practice.

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Reimagine UHL

Reimagine UHL, a project funded by the Irish Architecture Foundation Reimagine Programme, connected a design, architecture & engagement team led by Drake Hourigan Architects with the staff of University Hospital Limerick in 2022. The project explored the potential of the outdoor spaces of the hospital campus to offer support to staff in their working environment.

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Aoife’s Clown Doctors Spreading Smiles

Aoife’s Clown Doctors are based on the original Patch Adams, a doctor who found humour to be an integral part of children's wellbeing in hospital. Today our clown doctors are professional actors trained to work in healthcare settings, carrying out clown rounds in CHI Crumlin, CHI Temple Street and University Hospital Galway.

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I brought the dream of flying

I brought the dream of flying was an exhibition by artists Corina Duyn and Caroline Schofield which featured work created in response to Corina’s move into full-time nursing home care. Working together for 18 months, the artists developed a new methodology which enabled Corina to continue making art in the face of her increasing disability.

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Dance Bualadh Bos

Dance Bualadh Bos is a creative performance project, led by dance artists Ailish Claffey and Philippa Donnellan, and developed for and with older age communities in County Kildare. The project culminated in the creation of an original dance performance, presented privately to participants and to public audiences.

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Artist in Residence at the Mater Hospital

In 2019 Navin Hyder was invited to be the first artist-in-residence at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin. Hyder’s interest in oncology, in particular cancer operations, led her to the hospital’s operating theatres. Over a two-year period, she developed a large body of work consisting mainly of drawings of live procedures.

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Young Music Graduates Introduction to Music in Healthcare Project

The Music in Healthcare Young Graduates project was developed by Music & Health Ireland, the leading Irish training organisation in the field. The project connects recently graduated musicians to training and mentorship, new skill sets, competences and professional best practice in the field of Arts & Health.

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Past Times Community Choir & Voices of Spring

Past Times and Voices of Spring are two large community choirs in Kildare welcoming older people, including those living with dementia and other age-related illnesses. The choirs are supported by Kildare County Council Arts Service and have been directed by Sharon Murphy and Sadhbh O’Sullivan since January 2015.

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Creative Movement Workshops in County Wexford Day Centres

Dance artist Vivian Brodie Hayes details the methods and learnings from delivering standalone creative movement workshops to older people across 11 day care centres in County Wexford, supported by Creative Ireland’s Age Friendly Programme and Wexford County Council Arts Department.

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Reels on Wheels

Reels on Wheels is an inclusive adaptive Irish céilí dance programme developed by and for wheelchair users in collaboration with Munster Academy of Dance, during a pilot feasibility project in Limerick. The programme now runs weekly in the Irish Wheelchair Association’s Dunraven Centre, Limerick.

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Brightly Burning Flame

In June 2022 composer Justin Grounds was invited by the Irish Doctors Orchestra to join them in a week of gathering and music making on Heir Island, Cork. A new recording and film of Justin's piece for
string orchestra ‘Brightly Burning Flame’ resulted from this collaboration.

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Yes, But Do You Care?

A transdisciplinary arts project exploring dementia family care-giving and Ireland’s new capacity legislation. Initiated and led by visual artist Marie Brett, working with dance artist and choreographer Philip Connaughton and members of the Dementia Carers Campaign Network.

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The Three Sisters

The Three Sisters is a group of connected artworks for the new Ormonde Wing of St Luke’s General Hospital in Kilkenny made by artist Diane McCormick and commissioned by the HSE through the Per Cent for Art Scheme.

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Skibbereen HSE Campus Choir

Since 2018, a free weekly drop-in choir has been hosted by musician Liz Clark on the Skibbereen Hospital Campus over lunch hour which is open to all staff.

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Storytelling Residency at University Hospital Waterford

Joe Brennan was Waterford Healing Arts Trust’s Artist in Residence for 2021 at University Hospital Waterford. The residency focused on staff engagement due to Covid restrictions, offering storytelling online and outdoors. Changing circumstances during the residency also enabled Joe to tell stories at the bedside on the Paediatric Ward.

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Helium Arts Teen Remote Programme

During the pandemic Helium Arts' remote pilot programme offered connection and creative engagement for teenagers with long-term health conditions across Ireland who were more isolated than usual. Helium’s vision is for a long-term programme that reaches teenagers living rurally across Ireland.

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Training Notes – Music & Health Training in Ireland

Training Notes is a training initiative of Kids Classics, Ireland's leading music in healthcare organisation. Kids Classics has developed a framework of bespoke training courses which includes introductory workshops, supervised apprenticeships and team mentoring.

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The Balloon Tree

The Balloon Tree is a pair of sculptures by artist Róisín de Buitléar commissioned by Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) for its new Outpatient and Urgent Centre at Connolly Hospital and its Emergency Care facility at Tallaght University Hospital.

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Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember is an inclusive dance research project using adaptive Irish céilí dance and traditional Irish music for people living with dementia and their professional carers.

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Artist in Residency at Sligo University Hospital

In 2019 The Model commissioned Andy Parsons to be Artist in Residence at Sligo University Hospital. Parsons particularly focused on the Renal Ward where patients undergoing dialysis explored creativity through experiments in painting and drawing.

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1000 Days

1000 Days is a collaborative project between specialist health musicians Dr Rosalind Hawley and Mark Fisher, and spoken word artist Keisha Thompson, sharing stories of children, family, staff and musicians' experiences of health, music and hospitalisation through music and spoken word.

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Our Stories

Our Stories was developed as a creative response to the coming together of the three Dublin Paediatric Hospitals and in preparation for the move into the new children’s hospital, which is currently being built.

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A Bird at My Window and Other Stories

A Bird at My Window and Other Stories is a project by artists Sarah Fuller and Manuela Corbari for children and their families in hospital settings developed for Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture.

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Waterford Residential Care Centre: Per Cent for Art Commission

Artists Conall Cary and Peter McMorris were commissioned to create artworks for Waterford Residential Care Centre under the Per Cent for Art Scheme. The commission was managed by Waterford Healing Arts Trust and involved participation from staff and service users.

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Time in Our Lives

Time in Our Lives is a series of limited-edition illustrated books designed to engage participants and staff in creative conversation and art making during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Off the Wall

Off the Wall is a series of artworks by Alan Dunne at Children's Health Ireland (CHI) Connolly. The artworks were inspired by drawings created by some of the children and young people who visited the centre in 2020, along with conversations the artist conducted with CHI Connolly staff.

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Art and hope in a time of Covid

Gairdín Mhuire is a day care centre for older people located in Dingle. Úna Ní Shé has worked there as a visual artist since 2003. Úna describes her evolving response as an artist to the closure of Gairdín Mhuire to all normal activities in March 2020.

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Tune In with The Happiness Ensemble

Tune In is a multidisciplinary collaboration between filmmakers Aoise Tutty Jackson and Maggie Ryan with members of the 49 North Street community in Skibbereen and MusicAlive. The project was a response to Covid-19 restrictions with a focus on sound, music and ‘Tuning In’. 

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Embrace Music

Founded by musicians and Arts & Health practitioners Sharon Murphy and Sadhbh O’Sullivan, Embrace Music is a social enterprise on a mission to provide far-reaching opportunities for engaging with music.

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Freedom to Fly | Creative Enquiry – Arts and Older People

Freedom to Fly, hosted by MusicAlive, is an interdisciplinary, participatory project that engages older people in collaboration with Helga Deasy (choreographer and dancer) and Susan McManamon (musician and choir leader).

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OurVision OurVoice ‘20

A multimedia project devised by artist Rosaleen Heavin in response to Covid-19 restrictions. Delivered online, the project explores experiences of lockdown and isolation with participants from Longford/Westmeath Adult Mental Health Services and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.  

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Viriditas

Viriditas is a song cycle by Irish singer and artist Ceara Conway for The Deepest Shade of Green, an Arts and Health programme for Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture. Commissioned by Saolta Arts and Galway 2020, it was created for the staff and patients of the seven hospitals of Saolta University Health Care Group.

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Butterfly Haven

Butterfly Haven is a commissioned artwork by artist Lucy Turner dedicated to remembering our deceased colleagues in Tallaght University Hospital.

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The Museum of Song Postal Project

The Museum of Song is a song collecting project, co-created by artists Tess Leak and Sharon Whooley, that is delivered via the postal service. Part of the Arts for Health Partnership Programme, West Cork, it was adapted in response to the isolation of older residents in community hospitals during the Covid-19 lockdown.

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Summer Stars online art programme

Teenagers with cystic fibrosis face barriers when it comes to connecting and conversing with each other: due to cross-infection issues, they cannot be in the same physical space. Helium Arts established the Summer Stars online art programme in spring 2019 to support these connections and create a space for the development of creative skills.

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Waiting for Me

Waiting for Me is a collaborative visual arts and health project exploring the experience of waiting in an active creative space in the Paediatric Outpatients Area of South Tipperary General Hospital.

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Cúram

Cúram is a four person exhibition by artists Daniel Chester, Cherry Dowling, Amy McGovern and Stephen Rennicks. The artists, based in the environs of County Sligo, had artistic encounters within the realm of healthcare for older people. They were invited to make work responding to that experience.

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Songwriting with older people in care settings

Klawitter Theatre Group delivered songwriting projects with older people who visit the day care facilities at Henrietta Older Peoples Service and with residents in Belmont House Nursing Home, both based in Dublin, from June 2018 until December 2019.

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Le Pont des Arts (The Bridge of Arts)

Le Pont des Arts is a non-profit artistic company working in the paediatric departments of Brussels’ main hospitals. For 21 years, six artists (currently a singer, a musician, a dancer, a storyteller, a juggler and a visual artist) have been performing weekly in children’s rooms.

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The Songbirds

The Songbirds is a piece of theatre researched and written by playwright Guy Le Jeune examining the experiences of people living with dementia, and their primary carers.

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OFFSET

OFFSET was an intergenerational print project in 2019 involving participants in Paediatrics and Care for the Elderly at Galway University Hospitals and staff from the wider hospital community.

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The Sky’s The Limit

The Sky’s The Limit is a permanent installation of uniquely designed hot air balloons in Tallaght University Hospital.

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Memory is Grey

Memory is Grey is a body of work based on artist Gillian Cussen’s experience as a person and as an art facilitator with people who have some form of memory loss (and their loved ones).

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Tracing Autonomy: a reflective approach in support of a person’s autonomy in life

Tracing Autonomy explores autonomy, creativity and end of life. The project is a collaboration between two artists who work at The Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice (PPWH) in Glasgow, Jeni Pearson and Kirsty Stansfield, in consultation with philosopher Prof. Ben Colburn from the University of Glasgow.

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Irish Aphasia Theatre

Irish Aphasia Theatre is a socially engaged theatre and arts and health company working in professional theatre, community and health settings. IAT works with participants who have aphasia and/or acquired brain injuries related to ageing conditions and other brain traumas.

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Stories from the Well-Field

Stories from the Well-Field is an interactive performance created by a group of residents in St. Joseph’s Unit, Bantry General Hospital in collaboration with artist Tess Leak, puppeteer Eoin Lynch and composer Justin Grounds.

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The New Wing

Castlebar-born visual artist Bryan Gerard Duffy was awarded one of the HSE Percent for Art Scheme Commissions in the Sacred Heart Hospital, Castlebar as part of the new wing development in the residential home. Over five months, he collaborated with staff, visitors, and service users of the hospital, with the old dancehall days in Ireland as the starting point for conversations.

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Orchard Stories: A Bealtaine Artist Residency

Visual artist Joanna Hopkins was awarded the inaugural Bealtaine Artist in Residence in a Care Setting in 2017. Over four months, Joanna collaborated with residents of Orchard Day Care Centre in Blackrock, Co. Dublin, using the sensory garden as both a starting point for conversation and as a source for artmaking.

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Theatre for Positive Mental Health

Building on the award-winning Acting for the Future project, Smashing Times is the lead partner on Theatre for Positive Mental Health, promoting collaborative exchange and mutual learning between five partner organisations across Europe.

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Soothing Sounds

Soothing Sounds is a music project that took place in Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) at Tallaght University Hospital. Musician in residence Sophie Lee conducted interactive bedside music sessions with patients for 20 weeks between September 2018 and March 2019.

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Open Gallery

Open Gallery is an art project developed in 2018 by Waterford Healing Arts Trust (WHAT) which invites people living with dementia – and their family members / carers – to look at, discuss and enjoy paintings from the University Hospital Waterford (UHW) Art Collection in a safe and welcoming space, supported by professional artists.

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‘Got It?’

What is the best way to clearly communicate necessary healthcare information? 'Got It?' is a health literacy project by collaborative artists Rowena Keaveny and Julie Spollen, created in partnership with Anam Beo arts and health organisation and Offaly’s Public Participation Network.

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Portrait of a Patient

Portrait of a Patient is a four-piece collection of artwork and poetry by artist Sinead Lawless exploring her personal experience with illness.

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110 Skibbereen Girls

In 2018, artist Toma McCullim worked with the residents, staff and visitors of Skibbereen Hospital Campus on a collaborative art project to create a bronze public sculpture for the Hospital Grounds.

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Open Theatre Practice

Open Theatre Practice was established in 2017 by Outlandish Theatre Platform, theatre company in residence at the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital. Participants from diverse communities in Dublin 8, the hospital community, performing arts colleagues and other theatre practitioners are invited to take part in the process of making new work in response to a theme.

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Mother Ireland

Mother Ireland is a socially engaged research and performance project led by theatre artists Maud Hendricks and Bernie O’Reilly of Outlandish Theatre Platform in collaboration with the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital, Dublin. The project examines Ireland’s constitution against lived intersectional experiences of residents of Dublin 8, in relation to housing, migration and birthing.

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Can You See What I See?

Caroline Hyland is an artist in residence at Tallaght University Hospital (TUH). ‘Can You See What I See?’ is a series of paintings by Caroline strongly informed by listening to people with dementia and to those that support them, their families, friends and the medical professions.

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TODAY

TODAY was a photography project located in St Finbarr’s Hospital Campus in Cork city from 2013 to 2016. The project was led by artist Colette Lewis working in participation with healthcare staff to create new photographic work in response to the hospital campus.

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Discover Recover Theatre Project

The Discover/Recover Theatre Project is a mental health educational drama initiative. Embedding local stories in local communities through the medium of theatre, the project is led by Wexford Mental Health Association.

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The Dance Back Home

Ailish Claffey is dancer in residence at Tallaght University Hospital. The role of dance within the TUH Arts Programme is explored in the film documentary The Dance Back Home, created by Claffey in collaboration with visual artist Deirdre Glenfield.

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Pop Up Picnic

Pop Up Picnic is an immersive, multi-sensory performance project for young children with complex needs developed and produced by Helium Arts. Created in partnership with the Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation in 2016 for families in the home, the project has now being adapted for public audiences.

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The Trial

The Trial is a visual art installation on the history of healthcare and human rights in the Irish criminal justice system, made for the Old Courtroom, Kilmainham Gaol Museum, Dublin 8.

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Illuminating Childbirth

This project is an innovative research initiative entitled: 'Illuminating childbirth experiences of women attending a midwife-led service via visual art works - An interpretive phenomenological study.'

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Red Lead Film Group

Red Lead Film Group is a film project based in Waterford City with artist Philip Cullen and men with acquired brain injury.

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The New Normal

The New Normal is a collaborative community arts and health project exploring the lived experience of breast cancer through a visual arts lens. The project took place from 2016 to 2017 with artist John Conway and breast cancer survivors.

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PHOTOVOICES

PHOTOVOICES is a collaborative arts project examining through the camera lens the lived experiences of mental health in the Midlands of Ireland in 2017.

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The Creative Well – Phase II

The Creative Well is a visual arts and health programme that has developed from its 2011 pilot to provide space and place for arts participation in many forms for all in Co. Kildare. The programme is an ongoing partnership between KCC Arts Service, Kildare’s Arts and Wellbeing Specialist Carolann Courtney, the HSE Adult Mental Health Services and visual artists Dominic Thorpe and Emma Finucane.

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continuance

continuance by visual artist Clare Lymer is an installation of video works exploring the human experience of isolation suffered by tuberculosis patients.

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Well Festival of Arts and Wellbeing

Well Festival of Arts and Wellbeing in Waterford celebrates the health benefits of participation in the arts and features a programme of free, fun, inventive and sociable arts events for all ages, across all artforms.

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Pathway

Pathway is a collaborative Per Cent for Art commission between residents of Nazareth Care Village in Sligo and artists Catherine Fanning and Brigitta Varadi. Twelve sculptural ceramic artworks were designed and made for the grounds of the Care Village.

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Forget Me Never Project

The Forget Me Never Project was a collaborative visual art project at Tallaght Hospital from 2015 to 2017, led by Artist in Residence Lucia Barnes. Renal dialysis patients receiving treatment either in hospital or at home, staff, family and artists were all involved. The project resulted in a permanent artwork - The Forget Me Never Tree - in the new Haemodialysis Unit.

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Parachute in the Purse

Artist Sarah Ruttle led a collaboration with artists Tess Leak, Liz Clark and Colm Rooney to ‘imagine an Ireland of the future’ with the older residents and staff of two West Cork Community Hospitals over a three-month period in 2016.

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Drawing the Carers

Drawing the Carers is a series of portraits by artist Róisín Curé of staff in University Hospital Galway.  The project was commissioned by Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust in 2016 for a Uniform Recognition Campaign.

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Acting for the Future

Acting for the Future uses participative drama workshops, professional performances and post-show panel discussions with counsellors and clinical psychologists to promote active healthy lifestyles, positive mental health and suicide prevention.

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Daughters of the Revolution

Daughters of the Revolution is a theatre piece exploring women’s experience of maternity in Ireland.

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Songbirds

Songbirds is a music project with nonverbal children and young people with complex health and communication needs at The Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

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It’s not the size of the candle but the brightness of its light

Visual artist Louise Manifold was commissioned to develop participatory artwork on the theme of active citizenship in older people as part of the Burning Bright programme. In 2013/14, Louise worked across three different care settings in Galway City and County.

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Fuse programme for older people – creative movement projects

Fuse is a multi-disciplinary arts and health programme for older people, managed by MusicAlive and funded by the HSE. As part of Fuse, dance artist Helga Deasy facilitated a series of creative movement projects in locations around Cork city and county including St Finbarr’s Hospital, St Luke’s Home, Oaklodge Nursing Home and Ballyphehane Day Care Centre.

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Kicking the Bucket

Sinead Dinneen and Katie Verling are friends and arts practitioners curious about illness and death. We have experienced life-threatening cancers and live with ongoing medical problems. We developed Kicking the Bucket as a creative, humorous and thought-provoking participatory project on illness, dying, death and grief based on our personal experiences.

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Tiny, Kind Gestures

Designer Orlagh O’Brien and artist Tess Leak, who work collaboratively as Haiku Island Press, facilitated a poetry and book-making project in the Department of Renal Medicine, Cork University Hospital in 2016.

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Illuminate

Illuminate is a film and mental health programme that takes place as part of Cork Film Festival.

Case Studies

It Made You

It Made You is an album of original songs written by service users of St. Patrick's Mental Health Services in collaboration with The Twilight Programme at St. Patrick's Hospital and renowned Irish songwriter Sean aka ‘Doctor’ Millar.

Case Studies

The Bell Room

Based on oral history from psychiatric nurses, The Bell Room is a performed audio installation that examines the job of caring as told by those on the frontline.

Case Studies

Connections

Connections is a dance project facilitated by choreographer Inma Pavon, and interactive artist Trevor Furlong, in collaboration with Headway Cork.

Case Studies

The Leeside Serotones

The Leeside Serotones are a choral group based in Cork, made up of HSE mental health staff, service users and friends.

Case Studies

Write Your Mind

Write Your Mind is a collaborative arts project between Jigsaw Offaly, Headstrong and Offaly Youth Theatre exploring youth mental health.

Case Studies

Poems for Patience

Poems for Patience is an annual anthology of poetry by Irish and international poets displayed on the Arts Corridor of University Hospital Galway and disseminated throughout the waiting area networks of Galway’s public hospitals.

Case Studies

Journeys

Visual artist Sharon Dipity was commissioned by the HSE Cork Arts and Health Programme in 2014 to create site-specific artwork for Blackrock Hall Primary Care Centre in Cork following a competitive tendering process.

Case Studies

An Integrated Creative Arts Service at The Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice

The Creative Arts Service is a fully integrated ongoing core service at the Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice, Glasgow. It currently runs four days per week and is delivered by three graduate artists and a creative writer, all experienced in arts and health practice.

Case Studies

These Tangled Threads

These Tangled Threads was an investigation that reflected on the condition of dementia by artist Toma McCullim. The work was developed during a ten-week studio residency at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre and resulted in a site-specific installation shown at Uillinn in 2015 during the Skibbereen Arts Festival.

Case Studies

Cloudlands

Cloudlands is an artist in residence programme for teenagers in hospital led by Helium Arts. Artists Rachel Tynan,  Emma Fisher and Eszter Némethi worked in Temple Street Children’s University Hospital, University Hospital Galway and Cork University Hospital respectively between 2012 and 2015.

Case Studies

Bouncing Away

Bouncing Away is a children’s collaborative book project about resilience and mental health, funded by HSE Northwest. The project culminated in the publication of a children’s mental health book – the first of its kind in Ireland.

Case Studies

Iontas arts and mental health programme

Iontas is a multi-artform participatory arts and mental health programme which is delivered by Waterford Healing Arts Trust (WHAT) in partnership with the Waterford Wexford Mental Health Services (WWMHS).

Case Studies

Bedside

Bedside is an art project by Sligo artist Andy Parsons at the Inpatients Unit, Mental Health Services Sligo / Leitrim. In collaboration with patients, the artist developed a series of etchings for each bedside locker, as part of a commission for both male and female wards.

Case Studies

Silver Strands

Silver Strands was an interdisciplinary, collaborative project that evolved from a series of drama workshops in a residential mental health setting in West Cork, supported by West Cork Mental Health Services.

Case Studies

Lying in Wait

Lying in Wait was an artist in residence project with adult patients in Tallaght University Hospital led by artist Deirdre Glenfield and supported by the National Centre for Arts and Health (NCAH).

Case Studies

15 Miles

15 Miles is a Per Cent for Art commission at St. Brendan's Nursing Home in Loughrea, County Galway. In 2013, Galway County Public Arts Office commissioned artist Ceara Conway to produce a photographic participatory-based project.

Case Studies

Lifesongs

The Lifesongs project aims to bring to life memories, reflections and feelings of older people through a combination of theatre, humour, spontaneous music-making and songwriting.

Case Studies

Personal Effects: a history of possession

Personal Effects by visual artist Alan Counihan was based on the institutional archives and the belongings of dead or discharged patients from Grangegorman (St.

Case Studies

Box of Frogs

Box of Frogs is a happy play about being sad. Actress Mary McEvoy, comedian John Moynes and broadcaster Dil Wickremasinghe teamed up with writer Isobel Mahon and director Caroline Fitzgerald to share their stories of personal experience with a mental health problem.

Case Studies

Azure at St Gabriel’s

In 2014, Butler Gallery was awarded a grant to extend its Azure programme with people living with dementia in Kilkenny. Residents of St Gabriel’s Ward in St Canice’s Hospital were invited to engage with and respond to work from Butler Gallery’s Permanent Collection with a trained arts facilitator.

Case Studies

The Creative Check Up

The Creative Check Up is an interactive and participatory installation and performative event which has taken place in a variety of arts and health settings in Dublin since being established in early 2014.

Case Studies

Wise Ways

Wise Ways was a participatory arts project with older people, originating at Raheen Hospital in County Clare. A unique collection of handmade artworks in clay and personal memories or stories were created and exhibited at participating venues.

Case Studies

The Music of What Happens: A Student’s Guide to Arts and Health

In 2013, Galway Technical Institute was awarded an NAPD Creative Engagement Award to work with visual artist Marielle MacLeman and Further Education students on an introduction to Arts and Health practice. A series of participative workshops informed the publication, The Music of What Happens: A Student’s Guide to Arts and Health.

Case Studies

E.gress

E.gress is an audio-visual filmic artwork resulting from a regional and multi-sited collaborative project between artist Marie Brett, musician Kevin O’Shanahan and The Alzheimer Society of Ireland.

Case Studies

The Chair Project: On the Edge

In 2012, students at TASK (Training And Support Kilkenny) exhibited ‘On the Edge: The Chair Project’ as part of Kilkenny Arts Festival. This collection of almost 40 old salvaged chairs illustrated personal feelings, experiences and frustrations associated with mental health issues and the journey to recovery.

Case Studies

Creative Exchanges

Creative Exchanges is a course developed by Age & Opportunity for anyone leading creative activities with older people in care settings.

Case Studies

Participatory music-making at St. Joseph’s Care Centre

Musician Eamon Sweeney facilitated participatory music-making sessions for residential and daycare clients of St. Joseph's Centre, South County Dublin, in 2012-2013. The centre provides holistic care for older people who have illnesses associated with ageing, primarily people with a diagnosis of dementia.

Case Studies

CARE

CARE is an investigation into the ethos of palliative care and the people who work in palliative care. It is a piece of theatre produced by WillFredd Theatre, and developed with the company, artistic collaborators and Irish hospice staff.

Case Studies

The Magician and the Swallow’s Tale

In 2012, Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust was awarded an Arts Council Arts Participation Project Award to work with visual artist Marielle MacLeman on a yearlong arts project in the haemodialysis unit at Merlin Park University Hospital, Galway.

Case Studies

Cut Throat

Cut Throat was the result of a two-year Research Masters in NCAD undertaken by artist Rachel Tynan which aimed to visualise living with long-term illness. The final production of Cut Throat manifested in an exhibition, performance and series of talks at The Lab in Dublin.

Case Studies

Seasons of the Sun

Seasons of the Sun was a Music Residency at Robin House Children’s Hospice, Balloch, Scotland.

Case Studies

Lullaby Factory

Located at Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Lullaby Factory is both a physical structure, appearing to carry out the imaginary processes of making lullabies, and a soundscape, which delivers the lullaby to young patients in their beds or through listening pipes.

Case Studies

Creative Writing at Tallaght Hospital

In 2013 Michael McCarthy was Writer in Residence at Tallaght University Hospital. During his residency he facilitated three hospital groups: for people with chronic pain, an outpatient group for older people, and a creative writing course for staff members of the hospital. Michael also created his own original work in response to his residency in the stroke service.

Case Studies

Spears of Daylight

Spears of Daylight was a collaborative arts project that culminated in an exhibition of site-specific contemporary art inspired by the creative writing of service users at St.

Case Studies

deAppendix

deAppendix is a cultural space co-located with a Dublin suburban GP surgery that hosts a programme of contemporary art exhibitions and talks.

Case Studies

Sanctuary

In 2012, Anam Beo artists Tina Gaffey and Kieran Brennan facilitated an eight-week participant-led pilot project for patients in the Renal Unit of the Midlands Regional Hospital, Tullamore. The accessible technique of print was introduced to participants of various ages who decided on the theme of sanctuary for their group artwork.

Case Studies

Encounters, Triskel@St.Finbarr’s

Encounters was a collaboration between Triskel Arts Centre and St. Finbarr’s Hospital, a multidisciplinary hospital site. The collaboration formed part of the arts and health strand of Cork EU Capital of Culture 2005.  

Case Studies

REFLECT Lab

REFLECT Lab was a professional development opportunity in the North West led by Helium for artists and healthcare professionals working with children and young people.

Case Studies

The music programme of the Waterford Healing Arts Trust

The music programme of the Waterford Healing Arts Trust (WHAT) spans from hospital-based performances to participatory music workshops in hospital and community settings.

Case Studies

The Starling Song Project

Starling Song is a song-writing project investigating locality and connecting older people across West Cork.

Case Studies

The Creative Well

The Creative Well is an integrated participatory arts and health programme in County Kildare, supporting mental health and quality of life through the arts and within the context of local communities.

Case Studies

Converging Lives

Converging Lives was a collaboration between artist Marie Brett, musician Kevin O’Shanahan and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland’s (ASI) Bandon Day Care Centre, supported by the HSE Cork Arts and Health Programme and West Cork Arts Centre.

Case Studies

Arts Ability

Arts Ability is an inclusive, participatory arts programme that celebrates the artistic and creative imagination of people who experience mental health problems and/or intellectual, physical or sensory disabilities.

Case Studies

Arts + Minds – promoting the arts in mental health care

Arts + Minds is a Health Service Executive (HSE) arts and mental health programme based in Cork.

Case Studies

F*ck My Life

F*ck My Life (FML) is an original theatre production from Cork Midsummer Festival dealing with the tragedy of Ireland’s teen suicide epidemic.

Case Studies

Menu of Poems

Menu of Poems takes the form of a short anthology of poetry which is distributed annually to health service users in a range of healthcare settings in partnership with Poetry Ireland.

Case Studies

Dialogue Arts + Health

Dialogue Arts + Health was a regionally based professional development project for artists and practitioners working in arts and health settings.

Case Studies

Lived Lives: Materialising Stories of Young Irish Suicide 2003-2008

Lived Lives is an arts-led cross-disciplinary PhD by Seamus McGuinness located within the School of Medicine at University College Dublin which goes behind the statistics to capture stories of some of the young lives lost to suicide in Ireland.

Case Studies

What’s the Story? at St Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork

From Sept 2010 to June 2011, Meridian Theatre Company ran a multi-faceted story gathering arts project in St Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork.

Case Studies

Music Network Continuing Professional Development Programme

The Music Network Continuing Professional Development Programme supports musicians to develop their facilitative skills allowing them to engage in high quality musical experiences in a range of outreach settings including schools, community settings, healthcare settings and early years music.

Case Studies

Lifting the Spirits

Music programmes for older people in residential and day care settings

Case Studies

Arts for Health Partnership Programme

Arts for Health is a partnership programme based in West Cork which integrates the arts programmes into the culture and practice of healthcare settings for older people.

Case Studies

10 x 10 Balloons

On World Mental Health Day, 10 October 2011, 100 helium-filled balloons were situated around Sligo town and county – on the street, in shops and fields – just for that day.

Case Studies

BEAG – Early Years Arts Team Pilot Project

BEAG was a nine month pilot project which involved three artists exploring early years arts development in twelve early childhood settings in Cork city and county.

Case Studies

The Nurses’ Home

The Nurses’ Home book and exhibition was commissioned in 2008 by Mater Campus Hospital Development Ltd.

Case Studies

Niche Community Arts for Health Project

Niche is a Community Health Project, established in 1998, serving the Knocknaheeny/Hollyhill area of Cork city, which has a population of around 8000 people.

Case Studies

Hearth

Hearth is a Mayo based arts programme for older people living in their own homes.

Case Studies

O Bhéal guth Béal

In 2009, musician Ger Wolfe worked alongside older people in day care centres in Gaeltacht Mhúscraí, Co. Cork to compose new music based on people’s experiences of growing up.

Case Studies

In My Own Time

In My Own Time is a creative arts project with a group of older people in continuing and respite care that took place in St Patrick’s University Hospital, Marymount in Cork City.

Case Studies

The Chronic Illness Radio Play Project

Early in 2010, playwright and director Rebecca Moran conducted exploratory workshops with participants from Ceart PatientWise.

Case Studies

Liminality

Liminality is an art project by Ciara McMahon and the Living Gift Transplant Support Group that manifested at the NCAD Gallery Dublin in February 2011.

Case Studies

Waterford Healing Arts Trust – Artist in Residence Programme

The Waterford Healing Arts Trust (WHAT) has been running an Artist in Residence programme in Waterford Regional Hospital (WRH) since 1994.

Case Studies

The Puppet Portal Project

The Puppet Portal Project merged the areas of art, technology and health, in order to facilitate children in hospital to create interactive puppetry performances in four acute hospitals (Dublin, Limerick and Sligo), over a five-month period.

Case Studies

Memory Found

Memory Found is a pilot collaborative visual art project between artist Lucia Barnes, patients with dementia at the Age Related Day Hospital of Tallaght Hospital, Dublin, and carers of patients with dementia at the Blanchardstown Carers Association Centre, Dublin 15.

Case Studies

Personal Effects

The hospital is a place in which the accumulation of bacteria, fragments and possessions is discouraged. The emphasis is on sterility and functionality. These are not conditions which promote familiarity. Artist Jennie Moran wondered what she could bring to such a place. Her art project, Personal Effects, took place in the Stroke Unit of Galway’s Merlin Park University Hospital in 2009.

Case Studies

The Green Room Project

Artist Pauline Keena collaborated with a group of mothers, all of whom had the experience of losing a baby in the neo-natal period, to create an exhibition that reflected and was informed by the experience of embodied grief and the language of loss in the body.

Case Studies

Ian Wilson, Composer in Residence in the Stroke Unit, AMNCH, Dublin

Ian Wilson, Composer in Residence in the Stroke Unit of the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in 2010, developed a new composition based on conversations with staff and patients of the unit.

Case Studies

The Amulet

The Amulet was a national, multi-site participatory arts project led by visual artist Marie Brett which creatively explored the idea of an Amulet as an object signifier relating to critical life-span junctures of birth and death.

Case Studies

Music Network – European Music in Healthcare Settings Training Programme

Music Network participated in the development of a European Music in Healthcare Settings Training Programme with Musique et Santé, France; the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK; and The Academy of Music, Krakow, Poland.

Perspectives

Perspectives

This section presents opinion on aspects of arts and health practice from a range of perspectives including health service users, artists, healthcare professionals and researchers.

Perspectives

The brain is not designed for the role of spectator: Reflections from an improvisation co-creation project

Artist Joan Somers Donnelly co-creates performance work with people in community and healthcare contexts, exploring different modes of improvisation to relate to and connect with participants. Joan reflects on their recent collaboration with adults living with acquired brain injuries, in partnership with Headway Ireland, and the artistic processes that emerged from new ways of being in and experiencing the world.

Perspectives

From Crushed Systems to Creative Healing: A Global Perspective on the Transformative Power of Arts in Health

Dr Kunle Adewale is the Founder and Executive Director of the Global Arts in Medicine Fellowship. Kunle traces his journey from Lagos, Nigeria, where art became both a personal refuge and a catalyst for humanising healthcare environments, through to his stewardship of one of the world’s largest arts and health networks. He calls on practitioners, policymakers and funders to recognise the arts as essential to the future of global health.

Perspectives

Falling in love with the present moment: The Meisner acting technique in community settings

Actor and acting coach Luke Corcoran facilitates Meisner workshops for people from all walks of life, including adults in recovery from addiction. The Meisner acting technique emphasises present-moment truth, where we don’t pretend, we don’t act and we are simply ourselves. Luke reflects on how this acting approach can support personal growth and contribute positively to the recovery journey.

Perspectives

What it Means to be an OT Working in the Creative World

Nicola Spendlove is an occupational therapist, writer and performer. She is currently the Creative Communities Engagement Officer with Waterford City and County Council. Nicola discusses the shaping of her work by both the clinical and the creative, the seemingly tiny tasks that provide a foundation for our lives, and why the arts and Occupational Therapy make great bedfellows.

Perspectives

Drawing on Pregnancy Loss

The physical act of drawing, its precarious and uncertain nature, holds particular meaning for visual artist and researcher Lucy O’Donnell. Since 2016, her drawing practice has been a conduit for exploring deeply personal experiences of early pregnancy loss, reclaiming space for a common trauma that is routinely omitted from the pregnancy narrative and its attendant rituals. Using drawing as an embodied process of articulating loss, Lucy rethinks notions of ‘failure’ and the maternal body as home in the context of miscarriage.

Perspectives

Six challenges facing arts and health

Alex Cothren and Tully Barnett from Flinders University talked to members of 22 arts and health organisations across the globe for their 2024 report, What does an arts and health organisation do? Across wide-ranging approaches to advancing this work, they discovered core characteristics that connect the field and commonalities in the challenges facing these organisations. They summarise six key challenges and some of the solutions adopted by arts and health organisations to overcome them.

Perspectives

Finding my ‘guth’: The Lump vs the Irish Language

Irish surgeon Dr Denis Burkitt discovered Burkitt's lymphoma. Belfast filmmaker Éanna Mac Cana was treated for this cancer when he was 19 years old. His unique documentary feature film, Burkitt, combines his personal experiences as an inpatient with an exploration of the life and work of Dr Burkitt. Éanna discusses how he began re-learning the Irish language while making Burkitt and how finding his ‘guth’ (voice) created an environment for healing.

Perspectives

Strange Gifts: Community and Connection in Illness and Performance

When theatre maker Jenny Macdonald was recovering from breast cancer, she began creating a play inspired by that experience. Exploring the dynamics of caring and being cared for, The Tightrope Walker is a solo performance that seeks to hold a space for the audience the way that a facilitator does, a two-way exchange where the isolation of illness is interwoven with the deep connection of community.

Perspectives

The Stepping Stones Project: Moving with care through uncertainty

For young people who have experienced trauma, nurturing a safe space for creativity to unfold requires particular care and sensitivity. Art therapist Claire Flahavan and artist Emma Finucane brought their specific areas of expertise, and mutually supportive ways of working, to the Stepping Stones project at The Alders Unit, a therapeutic service for children and adolescents affected by sexual abuse. Claire reflects on their collaboration with young service users to create permanent artworks for the Unit’s new home at CHI-Tallaght.

Perspectives

HESITANT LIGHT

Joe Vaněk reflects on the aftermath of his stroke, which curtailed a career designing for theatre, opera and dance that has spanned four decades. An opportunity to write about his experiences for the Irish Heart Foundation marked his tentative return to the artistic fold. Here, he discusses the rekindling of his creative spirit as a writer and artist in a post-stroke world.

Perspectives

‘In life the song is a very important thing’ Museum of Song: Ireland and Ukraine

The Museum of Song is a song collecting project, co-created by artists Tess Leak and Sharon Whooley. New members of the West Cork community from Ukraine were invited to take part in 2022. Tetyana Karpenko and Olha Baglaenko of the Chervona Kalyna choir, supported by interpreter and choir member Ivan Humenuik, reflect on their experiences of sharing culture and kinship through song.

Perspectives

Memento Vivere

Navin Hyder reflects on her three-year artist residency at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin, where she created a large body of work in the hospital’s operating theatres. Hyder details the evolving nature of the residency, new terrain for both artist and hospital staff, and how personal connections with families impacted by cancer shaped its outcomes.

Perspectives

Nothing for us without us: Pavee Point’s creative approach to Traveller men’s health

Patrick Reilly and Michael Collins from Pavee Point Traveller & Roma Centre discuss the health inequalities that Travellers face, the work of the Men’s Health Team, and the Traveller-led creative initiatives that are giving visibility to Traveller men’s experiences.

Perspectives

Wellbeing and the Museum: Inclusive art programming in a changing world

Providing inclusive art experiences for older people within and outside of the museum walls is integral to the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Engagement & Learning Programme. Helen O’Donoghue and Bairbre-Ann Harkin reflect on the development of remotely accessible art programmes for older audiences during the pandemic and spearheading initiatives that speak to people’s needs in a changing world.

Perspectives

OURSELVES: A Nurse Poet Bears Witness

Most of the poems from my first collection of poetry, OURSELVES, come from vivid memories of my first years in nurse training: the shock and drama of illness; the strengths and weaknesses of those I worked alongside, and bearing witness to the vulnerabilities and suffering of patients.

Perspectives

A view from within: An Arts in Health project for hospital staff during Covid-19

Claire Flahavan works as an art therapist in St Louise’s Unit at Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) Crumlin. Claire reflects on her experience of Sidestep, an Arts in Health project for staff within the Unit at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Perspectives

Teen Spirit: Music adventures in the lockdown era

Davina Flaherty is a singer-songwriter and musician from Galway. A member of CanTeen Ireland, the national young people’s cancer support group, Davina has been taking part in an online music project since summer 2020 led by musicians Seán Carpio and Ríona Sally Hartman.

Perspectives

Time to Unite and Take Action: Managing an Arts and Health Programme during COVID-19

Diary entry 20th March 2020: ‘So much change around the world – every day, every minute’.

Perspectives

My Art and M.E.: The Demands of a Creative Mind

Artist and puppet designer Corina Duyn has been exploring the internal landscape of illness in her work since she was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) in 1998. Corina reflects on how her art making has evolved and new avenues of discovery have opened up as she challenges the limitations of the body with the demands of a creative mind.

Perspectives

Your Collection: The Arts Council Collection in Healthcare Settings

There are more than 180 artworks from the Arts Council Collection currently on display in 14 healthcare settings across the Republic of Ireland. Ben Mulligan and Ann O'Connor from the Arts Council provide insights into the lending and selection process, and the impact this artwork can have on healthcare communities.

Perspectives

Asylum Archive: An Archive of Asylum and Direct Provision

‘Memory, for migrants, is almost always the memory of loss.'

Perspectives

from both sides now: A reflection on the positioning of arts in health programmes in relation to healthcare organisations

‘I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now…’ sang Joni Mitchell and indeed, at the risk of sounding ancient, that’s how it has seemed for me in terms of my work in the area of arts in health to date.

Perspectives

When you asked us to look: The world of Open Gallery

Delivering an art project in an acute setting for people with dementia and other age-related conditions can bring unique rewards and challenges. This podcast explores the Open Gallery art viewing programme at University Hospital Waterford from the viewpoint of the healthcare staff, artists and participants involved.

Perspectives

Inhale Hope, Exhale Pain

Susannah Hall, Joint Head of GOSH Arts, reflects on The Temporary Tattoo Parlour at Great Ormond Street Hospital, developed by artist Davina Drummond with adolescent patients.

Perspectives

Culture and the arts in mental health innovation: Young people want and need more than ‘traditional’ ‘treatments’

Dr. Katherine Taylor, a clinical psychologist, advocates for arts-led interventions within child and adolescent mental health as an empowering, safe and cost-effective approach in fostering positive and sustainable change in a young person’s recovery journey.

Perspectives

Social Prescribing: A Collaborative Approach to Health and Wellbeing

People experiencing loneliness and social isolation often seek out their GP for a medical solution to the deep sense of loss and disconnection they feel. Cecily Maher discusses the growing role of Social Prescribing within healthcare provision, which connects individuals to non-medical sources of support within their local community.

Perspectives

Aesthetics and Design in Hospital Interiors

Well-designed hospitals lead to improved healing environments; I write from first-hand experience! Six years ago I spent many weeks in and out of hospital having treatment after surgery for cancer and, coincidentally, concurrent treatment for an autoimmune disease.

Perspectives

END NOTES

Novelist and short story writer Meaghan Delahunt reflects on her work at the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow. She highlights the importance of creative writing in palliative care and how it's never too late for any of us to explore our full potential.

Perspectives

Spectacular Body

Professor Anna Furse, theatre maker and practising academic, reflects on the personal circumstances that have led to a series of projects interrogating the ‘medical gaze’ and how the body, particularly the woman’s body, becomes spectacular through this gaze.

Perspectives

The Arts: my instrument for living with depression

After many years of living with depression, Carol Tobin was introduced to Arts + Minds, a HSE arts and mental health programme based in Cork. Here she talks about her recovery journey and the impact that participating in the arts has had on her life.

Perspectives

Lines of Escape

Visual artists Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly discuss the inspiration behind their artwork Run River Run for the new 75 bed ward at University Hospital Galway and how the initial challenges of a collaborative approach to creating public artworks led to rewarding avenues of exploration.

Perspectives

Whose Move? Body Politics and Health Equality: Positioning Arts Practice in Contested Territories

When engaging with marginalized experiences and excluded constituents, artists sometimes find themselves outside the current framework of arts and health practice.

Perspectives

The Value of Collaboration: Reflections on the implementation of the Per Cent for Art Scheme in a community nursing unit

As the Director of Nursing of a HSE community nursing unit for older people, I believe that residents should be able to live their lives to the full with opportunities for personal development and enrichment through connections to the wider community.

Perspectives

Opening the Box

Poet Paula Meehan reflects on a time of healing in her life when the excitement and mystery of art transcended the daily process of craft.

Perspectives

In Writing: finding a way through illness

Writer Lia Mills tells us how the notebooks she kept as a cancer patient helped her retain a sense of self during her treatment and led to a positive shift in her relationship with her artform.

Perspectives

A quiet megaphone for your knowledge: an artist’s approach to person-centred arts participation in healthcare

Addressing the imagined participants of an Arts and Health workshop, Marielle MacLeman draws from her experiences of working as an artist in palliative and chronic healthcare settings to reflect upon the values that underpin her responsive approach to person-centred arts participation.

Perspectives

Both Sides of the Coin: The Distinctive Value of Art in Health Care

François Matarasso calls for an acceptance of the differences between arts and science when assessing arts and health practice. 

Perspectives

Dante or the DSM*? Art and the re-imagining of ‘mental health’

Dylan Tighe is a musician, performer and theatre-maker with experience of mental distress and treatment who calls upon mental healthcare and society at large to look beyond the medical model to art and artists for a deeper understanding of existential pain and distress.

Perspectives

Mental Health, Recovery and the Role of the Creative Arts

Psychiatrist Dr Pat Bracken reflects on the paradigm shift towards the recovery approach in mental healthcare and the central role of the creative arts in this.

Perspectives

A Love-Filled Slap: A Manifesto for Arts and Health

Director of Arts for Health at Manchester Metropolitan University, Clive Parkinson describes the political thinking that led to and is embodied in the UK’s first Manifesto for Arts and Health.

Perspectives

Working with stories of other people’s traumatic experiences: Questions of responsibility as an artist

I sometimes make artworks dealing with other people’s personal and traumatic experiences, including mental and physical ill-health, and various human rights abuses, often through direct engagement or collaboration with them.

Perspectives

Grey Matters: The role of the Arts and Health in the delivery of ‘Healthy Ireland’

In light of the publication of ‘Healthy Ireland', Senior Health Promotion Officer Caroline Peppard calls for a recognition of the role of the arts in developing a culture of healthcare that goes beyond the scientific and considers all the determinants of health.

Perspectives

Artists, Political Education and the Care of Self in Social Practice

Before I went to art college I was a nurse and nurses, like artists, are trained to look.

Perspectives

Culture and arts in hospitals – a patient’s perspective

Katie Verling draws upon her own experience as an acutely ill patient to advocate for the receptive arts as a means of addressing the anxiety, boredom, isolation and sensory deprivation of patients.

Perspectives

Music in common: Probing the divergent mind-sets underpinning Music Therapy and Music in Healthcare

As a trained music therapist and a professional performing musician who works in healthcare settings, I am often asked ‘What is music therapy?’ and ‘What is the difference between music therapy and music in healthcare?’

Perspectives

A Disruptive Influence – introducing the role of an arts and health co-ordinator

The conjoining of those two spheres - arts and health - is not something that I would have heard of when I first started out as an art student.

Perspectives

The Weapons of Life: A case for arts participation as a creative response to mental health problems

In an era of austerity and scarce resources, a participatory arts programme as an integral part of the mental health services would appear to be an unaffordable luxury.

Perspectives

A Marriage of Apparent Opposites: The Arts in Medical Education

Medicine has always vacillated between the two separate lovers, art and science.

Perspectives

The place of loss in arts and health

The theme of loss surfaces through art again and again, even when it is not named as such.

Perspectives

Blood and Ink

Ben Murnane is a writer who lives in Wicklow and suffers from a rare genetic disorder, Fanconi anaemia. He describes how creativity helped him cope with his disease, and discusses a new film project involving teenagers with chronic illnesses.

Perspectives

It’s not you, it’s me

Kildare Arts Officer, Lucina Russell, argues for the place of arts and health practice as an integral part of a local authority arts programme, and describes how her own recent experience of healthcare has deepened her appreciation for this field of work.

Perspectives

Where does arts and health research belong in academic terms?

This podcast features extracts from a round table discussion by a group of postgraduate researchers around the academic positioning of arts and health research. It was hosted by the Waterford Healing Arts Trust in the School of Nursing Trinity College in 2011 and chaired by Catherine McCabe PhD.

Perspectives

Shall we discuss this outside? A look at artistic and medical responses to ethical quandaries

Artist and General Practitioner, Dr Ciara MacMahon, discusses how the fields of art and medicine differ in their responses to ethical issues and cites two contemporary artworks that raise challenging ethical questions of relevance to medics.

Perspectives

Can good arts and health practice be taught?

Hilary Moss argues for the need for accredited and on-the-job training for artists working in healthcare settings to ensure best arts and heath practice and place the work of artists in this field on an equal footing with health professionals.

Perspectives

The artist’s point of view

Between them, Helene Hugel and Marie Brett have long and varied experience of working as artists in a range of healthcare settings. Here they consider arts and health as an arts practice and reflect upon some of the challenges of sustaining artistic vision and integrity across different projects while building meaningful relationships with partners and participants.

Perspectives

A social model for health

Aidan Warner, Principal Community Worker with the HSE South (Cork), argues that art and health should consider a social model of health as the context for its practice in Ireland.

Perspectives

Crossword – a patient’s reflection on the WHAT arts programme in the WRH Dialysis Unit

Johanna Tanner is a Dialysis patient in Waterford Regional Hospital who has been participating in the Waterford Healing Arts Trust’s arts programme since 2008. Here she talks about her experience.

Perspectives

Why arts and health should not be confused with arts and disability?

I suspect the reason arts and health and arts and disability are seen as being one and the same thing may be due to some peoples’ perceptions around disability primarily being a health issue.

Perspectives

Art in healthcare contexts: To evidence or not to evidence

Evidence-based medicine is the use of current best research in making decisions about the care of individual patients. With the delivery of arts projects within healthcare settings, there is a debate at large as to whether it is appropriate to apply an evidence-based approach to arts interventions. Catherine McCabe PhD, lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, School of Nursing and Midwifery, presents her views.

Perspectives

To evidence or not to evidence?

Evidence-based medicine is the use of current best research in making decisions about the care of individual patients. With the delivery of arts projects within healthcare settings, there is a debate at large as to whether it is appropriate to apply an evidence-based approach to arts interventions. Sheelagh Broderick, artist and PhD researcher, presents her views.

Advice

Advice

Are you interested in developing arts experiences with healthcare communities.

Advice

Advice for Healthcare Professionals

This section provides some prompts and resources for health and social care professionals interested in bringing artist-led creativity to their settings.

Advice

Advice for artists

For artists interested in developing arts experiences with healthcare communities and other aspects of arts and health practice, the Advice page provides prompts, information and resources on how to get started, professional development, training and work opportunities.

Podcasts

Dementia and Arts – HSE Talking Health and Wellbeing Podcast

Host Fergal Fox explores how creativity and community engagement can support people living with dementia as part of the HSE Talking Health and Wellbeing Podcast Series.

Podcasts

HSE Talking Health and Wellbeing Podcast – Traveller Wellbeing Through Creativity

Martin Beanz Warde discusses his ‘Through Our Eyes’ photography project, funded under the Traveller Wellbeing Through Creativity initiative in 2022, and his personal story about expressing his creative ability in a variety of ways.

Podcasts

HSE Talking Health and Wellbeing Podcast – Staff Choirs

This HSE Talking Health and Wellbeing Podcast focuses on staff choirs and their impact on health and wellbeing. Alison Baker Kerrigan, Arts Officer in Tallaght University Hospital, is joined in conversation by podcast host Fergal Fox.

Podcasts

The Arts & Ageing Podcast

What Next? tells the story of four artists who worked with older people on a project that broke the mould. Their stories are told through the Arts and Ageing Podcast series.

Podcasts

Dealing In The Reality: Other People’s Practices

Dealing In The Reality is a panel talk exploring Other People's Practices (OPP), an artist residency and research programme with the National Forensic Mental Health Service.

Podcasts

Volcano Days in the Writing Room by Sylvia Cullen

Writer Sylvia Cullen was awarded an artsandhealth.ie artist bursary in 2020 to reflect on her 14-year creative writing residency at Killagoley Training & Activation Centre (KTAC) in Enniscorthy.

Podcasts

When you asked us to look: The world of Open Gallery

Delivering an art project in an acute setting for people with dementia and other age-related conditions can bring unique rewards and challenges. This podcast explores the Open Gallery art viewing programme at University Hospital Waterford from the viewpoint of the healthcare staff, artists and participants involved.

Podcasts

Mind-Reading 2017: Mental Health and the Written Word

Mind-Reading 2017 was a one-day programme of talks and workshops at dlr Lexicon seeking to explore productive interactions between literature and mental health both historically and in the present day.

Podcasts

Tiny Kind Gestures

Artist Tess Leak and designer Orlagh O’Brien of Haiku Island Press collaborated with 24 patients attending the Renal Unit at Cork University Hospital on a collection of haiku-inspired poetry. In 2017, diverse voices from the town of Skibbereen and surrounding area read aloud the entire collection of Haiku poems ‘Tiny Kind Gestures’.

Podcasts

Arts and Health Check Up, Check In 2017 – Keynote conversation between Mark Storor and Patrick Fox

A keynote conversation between artist and theatre maker Mark Storor and Patrick Fox from Heart of Glass chaired by Ailbhe Murphy from Create.

Podcasts

Arts and Health Check Up, Check In 2017 – Showcasing Strand

Presentations on The Creative Well: Emma Finucane (Visual Artist) and Catherine O’Grady (HSE Mental Health Services); 15 Miles: Bernie Austin (Director of Nursing, St. Brendan’s Nursing Home, Loughrea) and Ceara Conway (Visual Artist and Singer); and Care: Dr Regina McQuillan (St Francis Hospice) and Willfredd Theatre.

Podcasts

A quiet megaphone for your knowledge – Marielle MacLeman

Addressing the imagined participants of an arts and health workshop, Marielle MacLeman draws from her experiences of working as an artist in palliative and chronic healthcare settings to reflect upon the values that underpin her responsive approach to person-centred arts participation.

Podcasts

Sharon Murphy and Carolann Courtney: Singing and Health – A choir for people with dementia

The National Centre for Arts and Health at Tallaght University Hospital presented the seminar ‘Music and Health: Promoting excellence in practice’ in 2015.

Podcasts

Paula Higgins at the NCAH Music and Health Seminar 2015

Paula Higgins, Music Therapist with St. Patrick's Mental Health Services, discusses a collaborative song-writing project between singer-songwriter Sean Millar and over 90 service users which culminated in the release of the album, It Made You.

Podcasts

Caroline Peppard: The role of music in promoting health

Caroline Peppard is Senior Health Promotion Officer with HSE Dublin Mid Leinster.

Podcasts

Dr. Hilary Moss: Music and Health, a continuum of practice

Dr.

Podcasts

Professor Desmond O’Neill: Music and Health: From aesthetic support to formal music therapy

The National Centre for Arts and Health presented the seminar ‘Music and Health: Promoting excellence in practice’ on 23 October 2015.

Podcasts

Symphony of the Sea

A collaboration between musician and composer Justin Grounds, visual artist Tess Leak and participants of Clonakilty Community Hospital, as part of the West Cork Arts Centre-managed Arts for Health Partnership Programme, inspired by the everyday seaside activity of beach combing.

Podcasts

The Amulet

This radio documentary, made by Caroline Brennan from GiantLeap Productions, follows the work of Cork-based artist Marie Brett who collaborated with 10 Irish families who have experienced infant loss.

Podcasts

Talking Theatre: Dylan Tighe in conversation with Prof. Ivor Browne at Cork Midsummer Festival

Dylan Tighe's Record at Cork Midsummer Festival in 2012 explored his experiences of depression and living with mental illness.

Podcasts

Body Conscious Exhibition Talk

Mary Grehan interviews artist Dorothy Ann Daly about her work on the exhibition Body Conscious in Waterford Regional Hospital and her experience of making art since her diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis in the late 90s.

Guidelines

Helium Youth Participation Framework 2025 – 2028

Helium is the national children's arts and health organisation and operates from the belief that young people are experts in their own lives — and their voices matter. Too often, youth are left out of decision-making simply because of their age or identity. This Youth Participation Framework, co-developed with Helium's Youth Advisory Group, is a commitment to changing that. 

Guidelines

Fair Pay, Fair Practice Policy Toolkit

This Toolkit has been developed by the Arts Council as a practical guide for organisations to develop their own bespoke policies on fair pay and fair practice. It aims to support organisations to advance pay and working conditions for artists and freelance arts workers, and turn policy into transformative practice.

Guidelines

HSE Intercultural Guide

A guide developed in response to an expressed need by healthcare staff across a range of cultural backgrounds for knowledge, skills and awareness in delivering care to people from backgrounds other than their own.

Guidelines

National Arts in Hospitals Guidance (UK)

The first comprehensive resource for establishing and managing hospital arts programmes across the UK. An initiative of the National Arts in Hospitals Network (NAHN), the toolkit provides an evidence-based framework for embedding high-quality arts interventions in every hospital to improve patient care and staff wellbeing.

Guidelines

The Creative Health Impact Framework

The Creative Health Impact Framework has been created to support Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE), arts, and cultural organisations in London to plan for, evidence and communicate the value of their work to health partners in relation to health inequalities and health improvement. 

Guidelines

Adapting and implementing arts and health interventions: A thinking tool

This thinking tool has been developed by Jameel Arts & Health Lab and UCL to highlight key considerations that can be taken when adapting existing arts and health interventions to different cultural contexts.

Guidelines

Performing Anxiety: A resource for audience-facing arts projects about mental health

Performing Anxiety is a good practice resource for anyone who wants to make live artistic work about mental health, from autobiographical shows about anxiety and depression to participatory projects working with vulnerable people.

Guidelines

Homemade Circus Toolkit for Care Home Environments

The Homemade Circus Toolkit is designed to equip carers and activity coordinators with the skills and confidence to lead inspiring circus activity sessions in care home settings.

Guidelines

Assessing the Impact of Arts and Creativity Interventions for Older People: A Public Health Evaluation Toolkit

This toolkit by the all-Ireland Institute of Public Health aims to support the arts and creativity sector to design, plan, conduct, assess and report on evaluations of arts and creativity programmes and interventions within a public health context.

Guidelines

HSE Model of Care for Dementia in Ireland

The HSE Model of Care for Dementia sets out a range of targets and practical advice on assessment, diagnosis, treatment, care and support of people with dementia. The Post-Diagnostic Model of Care includes the role of the arts, and creative arts therapies, in supporting cognition and emotional wellbeing.

Guidelines

A Guide for Care Settings: Engaging an Artist and Sourcing Funding

This guide produced by Age & Opportunity addresses two of the biggest queries relating to arts for older people in care settings: how to engage an artist and where to source funding in Ireland.

Guidelines

What Next? Arts and Ageing Resources

This e-publication brings together a set of findings, recommendations, reflections and references informed by a Podcast and Workshop series held in 2022 that revisited the project Creative Enquiry: Arts and Older People.

Guidelines

Creative Health Quality Framework

The Creative Health Quality Framework outlines a set of principles articulating good practice for creative and cultural initiatives that aim to support people's health and wellbeing.

Guidelines

I Love Museums but they Don’t Love Me: Age and Disability Arts Access Info Sheet

This information sheet presents the opinions of arts venues and older people, including those who also identify as people with disabilities, in how to better engage with older audiences. It has been developed by Age & Opportunity and Arts & Disability Ireland.

Guidelines

Arts & Creative Charter for Older People

The Arts & Creative Charter for Older People sets out the arts sector’s commitment to promoting key values and guiding principles in engaging with older people.

Guidelines

Arts Council Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit

The Arts Council's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit has been produced to support arts organisations to prepare and produce their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy and Action Plans.

Guidelines

Sustaining the Self Toolkit

A self-reflection toolkit designed by artist Marie Brett to support self-care among those working in arts and health.

Guidelines

COVID-19 Guidelines for the Safe Presentation of Festivals & Live Events

This dynamic document by the Arts Council and Fáilte Ireland, published in June 2021, will evolve to reflect new government advice and changes to protocols as they emerge.

Guidelines

A Toolkit for Arts & Creativity in Care Settings

Age & Opportunity's Toolkit for Arts & Creativity in Care Settings is designed for use by managers and staff, in particular care setting creative activity co-ordinators, as well as non-arts professionals interested in arts in care contexts.

Guidelines

Working In Intercultural Contexts: Guide for Local Authorities and Cultural Providers

A Guide for Working in Intercultural Contexts has been produced by local authorities in Mayo, South Dublin and Donegal and is funded under the Arts Council's Invitation to Collaboration Scheme.

Guidelines

Guidance for working online, and online safeguarding if you’re working with vulnerable people (UK)

This guidance has been compiled in partnership between UK organisations the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance, Arts Marketing Association, 64 Million Artists, and Real Ideas.

Guidelines

An Introduction to Arts And Health // 10 Things to Consider

This publication is designed for healthcare professionals, artists and others who want to learn more about arts and health practice and may be at the early stages of planning an arts and health project.

Guidelines

All Heads Together – A ReCreate resource for artists and teachers working in inclusive educational settings

In partnership with Trinity College Dublin, this evidence-based handbook by ReCreate attempts to provide insight from the literature on pedagogy and educational theory and offers practical guidance to teaching artists and teachers working with reuse materials in inclusive educational settings.

Guidelines

Dementia & Imagination: Research Informed Approaches to Visual Arts Programmes

This handbook is a set of useful ideas and recommendations that come from a robust research project setting out some foundations for developing visual arts projects with and for people affected by dementia.

Guidelines

Good practice in the design of homes and living spaces for people with dementia and sight loss

These guidelines are based on findings from a study which aimed to assess the research evidence around what works well for visually impaired people with dementia in terms of the design of their homes and the things in them.

Guidelines

Health Building Note: Dementia-friendly Health and Social Care Environments

A set of design principles for dementia-friendly environments in healthcare buildings.

Guidelines

Public Art: Per Cent for Art Scheme General National Guidelines

National guidelines for the implementation of the Per Cent for Art Scheme.

Guidelines

Health Building Notes: General design guidance for healthcare buildings

Health Building Notes give best practice guidance on the design and planning of new healthcare buildings and on the adaptation/extension of existing facilities.

Guidelines

Volunteering in the Arts Toolkit

This toolkit provides a range of resources to help volunteer-involving arts organisations of all sizes to better engage and manage their volunteers.

Guidelines

Towards Confident Film-making: Programme Handbook

This workbook is a resource for young people's organisations interested in delivering film projects.

Guidelines

Arts and Volunteering: A practical toolkit for arts organisations and groups seeking to involve volunteers (PDF)

The need for this publication was identified by Volunteer Now and Voluntary Arts Ireland through various pieces of research into volunteering in the arts sector in Northern Ireland.

Guidelines

Artspulse Evaluation Toolkit (PDF)

A user-friendly guide to evaluating arts and wellbeing projects.

Guidelines

Our Duty to Care (PDF)

The principles of good practice for the protection of children and young people.

Guidelines

Guidelines for the protection and welfare of children and young people in the arts sector (PDF)

A document to assist arts organisations in the development of their own individual child protection and welfare policies and procedures.

Guidelines

Acting for the Future: Using drama and theatre to promote positive mental health

A model of best practice for using drama workshops and professional theatre performances to promote positive mental health Author(s): Mary Moynihan & Paul Kennedy.

Guidelines

Arts in Hospital: Handling the Media

A general introduction to handling the media in arts and health contexts, particularly aimed at personnel who may not have had press responsibilities in previous jobs.

Guidelines

Age & Opportunity Guidelines for Working with Older People in the Arts

A resource for Bealtaine Festival organisers and others involved in the arts and older people.

Guidelines

Arts Council Solo Practitioner Guidelines (PDF)

Guidelines for artists working in a solo capacity as practitioneers, facilitators or tutors with children and young people.

Guidelines

Guidelines for taking and using images of children and young people in the arts sector

Guidelines for arts organisations and artists working as arts practitioners, facilitators or tutors, on making, recording and using images of children and young people.

Guidelines

Garda Vetting and the Arts – An Overview (PDF)

An overview to Garda vetting and the arts in Ireland Author(s): Arthur Duignan.

Guidelines

The Arts & Health Handbook: a practical guide (PDF)

This handbook puts arts and health in context, and presents a practical guide to setting up and managing an arts project within health and social care settings in Ireland.

Guidelines

The Picture of Health (PDF)

A framework for the practice of arts in health settings.

Guidelines

Working Creatively with Older People: A practical guide

A practical guide for working creatively with older people.

Guidelines

Participatory Arts Practice in Healthcare Contexts

Guidelines for good practice for artists and healthcare professionals engaged in participatory arts practice in healthcare contexts in Ireland.

Research & Evaluation

Crafting health and wellbeing: European perspectives on the power of making

The Crafting Health and Wellbeing study, commissioned by the European Crafts Alliance, presents a comprehensive examination of the relationships between crafts, health, and wellbeing across Europe. The report demonstrates that traditional crafts are a highly effective tool that deserve a formal place in preventative healthcare.

Research & Evaluation

Arts and Creativity Within Social Prescribing

Social prescribing connects individuals to non-clinical supports within their communities to address diverse health and social needs. This research report, comissioned by the Arts Council and the HSE, examines the role that arts and creativity play in HSE-funded Social Prescribing Services in Ireland.

Research & Evaluation

The ‘Art of Life’ social return on investment evaluation report

The ‘Art of Life’ project is a cross-border, community-based creative initiative designed to support individuals engaging in conversations about death, dying and advance care planning topics that are often difficult or avoided. This evaluation report by RCSI assesses participant outcomes and estimates the social value generated by the project using a Social Return on Investment (SROI) framework.

Research & Evaluation

Assessing the Economic Impact of the Arts on Health and Healthcare Services in Wales

Engagement with the arts delivers at least £588 million in annual health and wellbeing benefits across Wales, according to this independently-conducted report which draws on research from the Centre for Health Economics and Medicines Evaluation at Bangor University and the Research Centre for Arts and Wellbeing at Edge Hill University.

Research & Evaluation

Blooming Minds Club: 2023-2025 Evaluation Report

The Blooming Minds Club is a creative arts hub in County Louth for young people attending CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services). Youth-led and artist-supported, the club was established in 2023 at Creative Spark Dundalk. This independent evaluation by Dr Pamela Whitaker of Ulster University uses the Lundy Model of child participation to identify the impact of the Blooming Minds Club.

Research & Evaluation

Exploring participation in a recovery focused-filmmaking group for younger adults receiving mental health care

This study explores the experiences of participants on a recovery-focused filmmaking group in Dublin North City. Younger adults (aged 23–30) attending a community mental health service participated in a nine week filmmaking programme facilitated by an occupational therapist and a filmmaker.

Research & Evaluation

Report: Skills development, wellbeing and belonging in creative health

Skills development across creative health is the subject of this brief report from the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance in the UK – an area which intersects importantly with both the wellbeing of the workforce and its diversity and representativeness. The report looks at why training is needed in creative health, the kind of training that is currently available and the kind of training that is needed.

Research & Evaluation

Once Upon A Song: Creativity in Older Age

Once Upon A Song: Creativity in Older Age, an evaluation from Music & Health Ireland, highlights the powerful impact of live music in nursing homes and makes a clear call for sustained, long-term funding to move beyond short-term project cycles. Led by trained healthcare musicians, the Musicians-on-Call and Tea, Chats & Tunes programmes were supported through Creative Ireland’s Creativity in Older Age funding.

Research & Evaluation

Social prescribing outcomes: a mapping review of the evidence from 13 countries to identify key common outcomes

As a means for supporting a range of health and wellbeing goals, social prescribing programmes have been implemented around the world. This mapping review explores the broad array of social prescribing outcomes that have been studied in 13 countries and maps the outcomes that have been most commonly studied.

Research & Evaluation

Arts-based interventions for maternal well-being: a systematic review

This systematic review examines published studies that explore the relationship between arts-based activity and maternal health and/or wellbeing. The review aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the ways in which arts-based practices were being used; some of the outcomes identified; and the way in which outcomes were being measured, evaluated and documented.

Research & Evaluation

A Multimethod International Mapping Exercise of Arts Interventions in Renal Units: The PAINT Project

The aim of the PAINT project was to undertake an international mapping exercise to identify the current provision of arts programmes in kidney centres for people living with kidney disease. The arts activities being offered globally and experiences of renal healthcare staff who provide activities in their units are encouraging in terms of arts in healthcare.

Research & Evaluation

Arts Engagement as a Health Behavior: An Opportunity to Address Mental Health Inequities

This U.S. study uses an applied social ecological model of health, showing how arts engagement can support mental health and reduce mental health inequities at the individual, interpersonal, community, policy, and cultural levels. 

Research & Evaluation

The impact of social prescribing on health service use and costs: Examples of local evaluations in practice

This report from the National Academy for Social Prescribing in the UK summarises the analysis of social prescribing evaluation data from nine local health systems across England. The findings indicate that social prescribing can substantially reduce pressure on the NHS, including through reduced GP appointments, reduced hospital admissions and reduced A&E visits. 

Research & Evaluation

Sites of Significance

Sites of Significance is a research report exploring pathways to engagement and work in dance experienced by dance artists and facilitators who live and / or work within territorial border areas of Cavan and Fermanagh-Omagh Council areas. One of the report recommendations is for greater recognition and resourcing by local authorities of local dance facilitators for their contribution to social and health-based outcomes.

Research & Evaluation

What does an arts & health organisation do?

There is currently a great deal of momentum in arts and health practice, research and advocacy around the world. To understand what is driving this momentum and how arts and health organisations and practitioners are operating in creating and/or benefitting from that momentum, this report gathers insights from people working in some of the world’s most innovative arts and health organisations. One of the organisations featured is Réalta, Ireland's national resource organisation for arts and health.

Research & Evaluation

Understanding the Potential of Clinical-Creative Partnerships to Improve Dementia Care

This synthesis report explores the potential of clinical-creative partnerships to enhance dementia care. Spearheaded by Gráinne Hope, Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at GBHI and Director of Music & Health Ireland, the report is informed by a series of cross-disciplinary roundtable discussions. The report identifies key opportunities and makes a set of recommendations to bridge gaps in dementia care across sectors.

Research & Evaluation

Art and the Healing Environment

Curator Vivienne Reiss was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to visit Denmark, Sweden and Japan and explore how healthcare buildings in these countries enhance health and wellbeing, and the contribution of art to the healing environment. Her findings illustrate the multi-faceted role of art and include 13 case studies in general, paediatric and psychiatric hospitals.

Research & Evaluation

Arts and Health Evaluation: Navigating the Landscape

This guide is designed to support anyone working in arts and health to navigate the landscape of evaluation. Published by the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at UCL, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health, it includes a comprehensive mapping of what arts and health evaluation frameworks and toolkits exist, supporting you to make choices regarding which resources are the most suitable for your evaluation.

Research & Evaluation

Orchestras in Healthcare 2023

Orchestras in Healthcare #2 explores the contribution that orchestras (including those integrated in opera companies) currently make in the public health sector in the UK. This report presents findings from the second UK-wide Orchestras in Healthcare survey (the first survey was undertaken in 2020).

Research & Evaluation

Creative Health Review: How Policy Can Embrace Creative Health

The Creative Health Review led by The National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (APPG AHW) in the UK highlights the potential for creative health to help tackle pressing issues in health and social care and more widely, including health inequalities and the additional challenges we face as we recover from Covid-19.

Research & Evaluation

WHO expert meeting on prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases: learning from the arts

This report summarizes the proceedings of an expert meeting held on 15–16 December 2022 in Budapest, Hungary, on the value of arts interventions for health, focusing on initiatives for mainstreaming arts into prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases (‎NCDs)‎ in the WHO European Region.

Research & Evaluation

Creative Carers Report: Arts for Health Partnership, West Cork

In 2022, the Arts for Health Partnership developed and delivered Creative Carers, a participatory arts programme strand for and with carers in West Cork. This report explores the research and development phase, programme strands and delivery, and quantitative and qualitative outcomes.  

Research & Evaluation

An Evaluation of Tea Chats & Tunes Music Residency

Tea, Chats & Tunes is a collaborative partnership aimed at connecting residents in nursing homes with their families through the power of music. The programme is delivered by Music & Health Ireland. This evaluation highlights the importance of its person-centred approach in strengthening social connections and enhancing the wellbeing of residents.

Research & Evaluation

An Evaluation of Music in Health Workshops Delivered by Music & Health Ireland

This evaluation report sheds light on the impact of staff workshops facilitated as part of the Musicians-On-Call programme in 2022. The report focuses on the ‘Introduction to Music in Healthcare for Healthcare Staff’, exploring the possibilities of supporting staff to learn creative approaches used by professionally trained healthcare musicians to help residents in engaging purposefully with music in their daily care roles.

Research & Evaluation

Creative activity in the ageing population: Findings from Wave 6 of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing

Older adults in Ireland who participate in arts, creative and cultural activities report higher quality of life and lower levels of depression, stress, worry and loneliness, according to this report from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) at Trinity College Dublin.

Research & Evaluation

The Impact of Arts and Cultural Engagement on Population Health

This report summarises findings from a series of longitudinal studies conducted between 2017 and 2022 that examined the relationship between arts and cultural engagement and health and wellbeing outcomes using UK and US cohort studies. 

Research & Evaluation

The arts in public health policy: progress and opportunities

WHO has called for governments to take an intersectoral approach to realise the potential of the arts for public health. To explore what global progress is being made towards this aim, this paper presents examples of arts and health policy development from diverse government areas: health, arts, local governments, and cross government.

Research & Evaluation

CultureForHealth Report: Culture’s contribution to health and well-being

The CultureForHealth Report is a scoping review of existing evidence on the positive effect of arts and cultural activities on health and wellbeing. The report includes policy recommendations for stakeholders in the cultural, health and social sectors, and decision makers at local, national and European level.

Research & Evaluation

Mapping Arts and Health Across the Midlands

This research report maps the landscape of arts and health practice and provision across the Midlands. The report teases out a complex ecosystem of people, agencies, resources, policies and understandings in order to answer the key question: ‘how can we collaborate better?’

Research & Evaluation

Making Modern Art Accessible: An Outcome Report on the IMMA Art & Ageing Programme

The Irish Museum of Modern Art launched Art & Ageing, an inclusive art programme, in autumn 2020 to help older adults and people living with dementia to combat the social side effects of the global pandemic. This report contains a programme overview, key findings and qualitative feedback collected from stakeholders.

Research & Evaluation

Practising Well: Conversations & Support Menu

The working conditions for creative practitioners in the participatory arts sector are explored in Nicola Naismith’s research. Participants bring increasingly complex and vulnerable positions into participatory arts opportunities, which in turn leads to an intensification and diversification of experience, for both participant and creative practitioner. This report focuses on practical ways to achieve best and sustainable practice.

Research & Evaluation

Discoveries in Distanced Arts: The work, wonder, and wear of Entelechy Arts’ Staying Connected Programmes – Practice Report

This practice report, based on research led by Entelechy Arts and Queen Mary University of London, shares learning on how to develop remote arts programmes for older adults.

Research & Evaluation

Arts and Creativity in Later Life: Implications for Health and Wellbeing in Older Adults. A Systematic Evidence Review.

This report provides an overview of a systematic evidence review to develop a better understanding of what the evidence tells us about the role arts and creativity plays in older people’s health and wellbeing.

Research & Evaluation

Creative activity in the ageing population

This report presents findings on creative activity participation among older adults in Ireland using data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) at Trinity College Dublin, a nationally representative study of community dwelling adults aged 50 years or older in Ireland.

Research & Evaluation

Evaluation of Care Hubs of Arts and Creative Excellence Initiative

The Care Hubs of Arts Excellence are an initiative of Age & Opportunity’s Arts Programme. This independent evaluation focuses on the process of implementing the Care Hubs and the impact of the initiative, including the creation of new knowledge of the arts in care settings for older people.

Research & Evaluation

Social Return on Investment study of the Helium Arts Creative Health Hub Programme

Helium Arts is the national children's arts and health organisation. This Social Return on Investment study covers Helium's work over a two-year period (2019 - 2020). The research found that the social value of Helium's work is worth almost twice as much as the funding it receives based on the outcomes achieved for stakeholders.

Research & Evaluation

Infographic: Mapping Arts and Health Activity in Ireland in 2019

Key findings from the mapping report displayed in infographic form. This research, commissioned by Arts and Health Co-ordinators Ireland (AHCI) and carried out by Dr. Francesca Farina, measures activity across a range of healthcare contexts, from hospitals and day care centres, to community settings and health promotion.

Research & Evaluation

Mapping Arts and Health Activity in Ireland in 2019

This mapping report, commissioned by Arts and Health Co-ordinators Ireland (AHCI), measures the level and nature of Arts and Health activity in the Republic of Ireland in 2019.

Research & Evaluation

Choirs in Crisis – Soundbites of Singing through the first year of COVID-19

As an independent adjunct to an online survey investigating singing group leaders’ experiences of online singing sessions during the COVID-19 pandemic, undertaken by the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health, these five cases by Angus McLewin Associates capture some of the ways that community singing groups and choirs managed to keep singing through the first year of COVID-19, from February 2020 to March 2021.

Research & Evaluation

Vocal Beats: External Evaluation Report 2020

Vocal Beats is a hospital-ward-based music project led by rb&hArts for children and young people aged 0-25 years old at Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust.

Research & Evaluation

Discover/Recover Theatre Project: “A Face in the Crowd”: A Social Impact Study

The Discover/Recover Theatre Project is a preventative mental health intervention led by Wexford Mental Health Association that seeks to increase mental health literacy and reduce stigma through education and awareness-raising.

Research & Evaluation

Life Worth Living: The Report of the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce

An Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce was appointed in September 2020 to prepare a report for the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media including a set of recommendations on how best the arts and culture sector can adapt and recover from the unprecedented damage arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research & Evaluation

Create Ireland Collaborative Arts Resource Pack

At the Create Networking Day (9 December 2020), delegates came together in a facilitated interactive session entitled “Connect” which offered a chance to meet, talk, share, and strategise together.

Research & Evaluation

Creative Enquiry: Artist Residency and Older People Engagement Project

Creative Enquiry - Arts and Older People is an investigative collaborative venture that creatively explores fresh approaches to arts engagement with older people and advances best practice models.

Research & Evaluation

Arts & Health Hub: COVID-19 Artist Impact Report

The Arts & Health Hub (UK) released its COVID-19 Impact Report in July 2020 examining how the pandemic has affected artists in the arts & health sector.

Research & Evaluation

Employment and Economic Impact Assessment of Covid-19 on the Arts Sector in Ireland

EY were commissioned by the Arts Council in May 2020 to support the work of the COVID-19 Arts Council Advisory Group.

Research & Evaluation

A response to the Covid-19 crisis for the Arts in Ireland: Report of the Expert Advisory Group to the Arts Council

A report by the Expert Advisory Group established by the Arts Council to address the Covid-19 crisis in the arts sector, published in June 2020.

Research & Evaluation

An assessment of the scope and nature of arts and health practice in Ireland

This study aims to assess the nature and scope of arts and health practice in Ireland with a view to informing a joint framework between the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the Arts Council of Ireland.

Research & Evaluation

WHO Report: What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review

The first-ever report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on the evidence base for arts and health interventions.

Research & Evaluation

Tallaght University Hospital Arts and Health Programme: 4 Year Review

This four-year review of the National Centre for Arts and Health at Tallaght University Hospital brings together accumulated reports from 2015 to 2018 and covers three key areas of programming: participative arts, receptive arts and creative arts therapies.

Research & Evaluation

Creating Healthy Communities through Cross-sector Collaboration

This white paper by the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine and ArtPlace America frames the value of arts and culture for advancing health and wellbeing in communities, and offers examples of impactful cross-sector collaborations that engage arts and culture to address five critical public health issues: collective trauma, racism, social isolation and exclusion, mental health, and chronic disease.

Research & Evaluation

An evaluation of the WHAT Arts Programme in the Renal Dialysis Unit at UHW – Executive Summary

Waterford Healing Arts Trust has been running an arts programme in the Renal Dialysis Unit at University Hospital Waterford since 2007.

Research & Evaluation

Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing

A Second Report from the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing in England explores in greater depth the development of the museums, health and wellbeing sector.

Research & Evaluation

Calm and Collected: Museums and galleries: the UK’s untapped wellbeing resource?

The results of two stages of research undertaken by Art Fund – a UK-wide representative survey of over 2,500 adults, and a qualitative social study – suggest that engaging with art collections more frequently can help improve our wellbeing.

Research & Evaluation

Artists Practising Well

Artists Practising Well is a research report by Nicola Naismith, focusing on the topic of affective support for creative practitioners working in participatory arts in health and wellbeing.

Research & Evaluation

Dance and Health Research Project Report

The aim of this research is to create a best practice model of dance and health continuing professional development (CPD) and a dynamic, interdisciplinary course of study for dancers who are engaged in facilitating dance across a range of dance genres within healthcare contexts in Ireland.

Research & Evaluation

Sing while you work: the wellbeing benefits of workplace choirs

The first study of workplace choirs in Ireland and one of very few studies internationally to explore the health and wellbeing benefits of choirs for Health Service Staff.

Research & Evaluation

Arts and culture in health and wellbeing and in the criminal justice system: A summary of evidence

An assessment of the current evidence base around the place of arts and culture in health and wellbeing and in the criminal justice system by the Arts Council England.

Research & Evaluation

Live Music in Care: The Impact of Music Interventions for People Living and Working in Care Home Settings

Live Music Now in partnership with MHA (Methodist Homes), the Orders of St John Care Trust and Winchester University led an enquiry to explore whether weekly music sessions, provided for staff and residents in care homes, support the care home environment to be a place where residents and staff are happy to live and work.

Research & Evaluation

Art Thou Well? Towards Creative Devolution of Mental Health in Greater Manchester

This report, written in the context of the Devolution deal of 2014, explores the myriad roles the arts could, and do, play in the service of mental health in Greater Manchester (GM).

Research & Evaluation

Exploring the theoretical foundations of visual art programmes for people living with dementia

This paper explores how and why visual art interventions in dementia care influence changes in outcomes.

Research & Evaluation

Strength in Networks (UK)

A comparative analysis of six creative interventions designed for people diagnosed with dementia across England and Wales.

Research & Evaluation

Narratives of health and illness: Arts-based research capturing the lived experience of dementia

This paper presents three artists’ residencies in a geriatric medicine unit in a teaching hospital.

Research & Evaluation

Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing

An inquiry into practice and research in the arts in health and social care by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing in the UK. This two-year inquiry (2015-2017) was conducted with a view to making recommendations to improve policy and practice.

Research & Evaluation

Arts for Health and Wellbeing: An evaluation framework

This document provides guidance on appropriate ways of documenting the impacts of arts for health and wellbeing, whether through small scale project evaluations or large scale research studies.

Research & Evaluation

The Impact of Arts Activity on Nursing Staff Well-Being: An Intervention in the Workplace

Over 59 million workers are employed in the healthcare sector globally, with a daily risk of being exposed to a complex variety of health and safety hazards.

Research & Evaluation

The Role of the Modern Curator in Hospital

This paper explores the role of the curator in the modern hospital through an international qualitative study of ten professionals working as arts managers / curators in English speaking hospitals.

Research & Evaluation

The Bare Necessities of Life – Reactions to Kids’ Classics Live Music in a Children’s Hospital in Ireland

An independent evaluation documenting the evidence of the impact of Kids’ Classics music activities in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin.

Research & Evaluation

Aesthetic deprivation: the role of aesthetics for older patients in hospital (PhD thesis)

This thesis was submitted by Hilary Moss towards the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Medical Gerontology, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin in 2014.

Research & Evaluation

A review of the Social Impacts of Culture and Sport (UK)

This research reviews the current evidence base on the social impacts of sport and culture.

Research & Evaluation

Exploring the Longitudinal Relationship Between Arts Engagement and Health

This report reveals that engaging with the arts and culture generally has a positive long-term effect on health and wellbeing.

Research & Evaluation

Hospitalization and Aesthetic Health in Older Adults

This study assesses the impact of hospitalization on arts engagement among older people and perceptions of whether hospitals are aesthetically deprived environments.

Research & Evaluation

Wellbeing in four policy areas: Report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics

Through the lens of four specific policy areas, this UK inquiry sets out to demonstrate that national wellbeing evidence should be used to inform policy.

Research & Evaluation

Restoring the Balance: the effect of arts participation on wellbeing and health

A collection of interviews conducted between May and July 2009.

Research & Evaluation

Aesthetic Deprivation: the role of the arts for older people in hospital (PhD Summary)

A summary of a PhD conducted at Trinity College Dublin School of Medicine under the supervision of Prof Des O’Neill and Dr Claire Donnellan.

Research & Evaluation

Confidentiality, Consent and Decision Making in Arts and Health Participatory Art Practice

An investigation exploring tensions that arise in confidentiality, decision making and consent within an arts and health context.

Research & Evaluation

Arts, Health and Wellbeing Beyond the Millennium: How far have we come and where do we want to go?

This UK report provides a review of the evidence for the benefits of the arts to health, as well as the policy context of commissioning arts and health initiatives.

Research & Evaluation

Healthy Attendance?

A study that looks at the impact of cultural engagement and sports participation on health and satisfaction with life in Scotland.

Research & Evaluation

The aesthetic and cultural pursuits of patients with stroke

This study aimed to obtain insights into people affected by stroke about the profile of art and aesthetic activities in their lives and the influence of stroke on these aspects.

Research & Evaluation

The aesthetic and cultural interests of patients attending an acute hospital – a phenomenological study

This qualitative study explores the aesthetic and cultural pursuits of older patients in hospital.

Research & Evaluation

Synaesthesia

This is an exploratory document which teases out some of the conditions needed for a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach to art making in a mental health setting.

Research & Evaluation

Arts Ability Programme: Arts and Health or Arts and Disability or both?

A record of Wexford County Council’s considered position on its relationship to Arts and Health and Arts and Disability in relation to the Arts Ability programme.

Research & Evaluation

RNCM Medical Notes Project at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital

A report on the outcomes of the Medical Notes Project for children, families, musicians and staff at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.

Research & Evaluation

REFLECT Lab Co-mentoring: North West Evaluation

An evaluation of REFLECT Lab, a professional development opportunity led by Helium Arts for artists and healthcare professionals working with children in the North West.

Research & Evaluation

Azure: Exploring greater inclusion of people with dementia in museums and galleries in Ireland

A pilot evaluation of the Azure project at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny.

Research & Evaluation

New Model Visual Arts Organisations and Social Engagement

Four intensive organisational case studies characterise and compare distinctive approaches to socially engaged visual arts practice in the UK.

Research & Evaluation

Singing and Mental Health

A UK evidence-based guide on the benefits of group singing for mental health and wellbeing.

Research & Evaluation

Beyond Diagnosis – the transformative potential of the arts in mental health recovery

Arts + Minds commissioned Lydia Sapouna to investigate the impact and potential of the arts within mental health care.

Research & Evaluation

Art Programme in the Dialysis Unit, Tallaght Hospital, 2011-2012

A report on the art programme in the Dialysis Unit of Tallaght Hospital.

Research & Evaluation

Art for Health: A review of good practice in community-based arts projects and interventions which impact on health and wellbeing

A UK review, produced in 1999, on the nature of arts for health initiatives and recommendations for good practice.

Research & Evaluation

MUSIC IN HEALTHCARE PROJECT: EVALUATION REPORT PHASE TWO

A report of the second phase of the evaluation of the Music in Healthcare Project, a partnership between Music Network and the Midland Health Board.

Research & Evaluation

MUSIC IN HEALTHCARE PROJECT: EVALUATION REPORT (PDF)

A report of the first phase of the evaluation of the Music in Healthcare Project: a partnership between Music Network and the Midland Health Board.

Research & Evaluation

MUSIC IN HEALTHCARE PROJECT: PHASE 3 INTERIM EVALUATION REPORT (PDF)

An evaluation report of the first year of Phase 3 of the Music in Healthcare programme: a partnership between Music Network and the Midland Health Board.

Research & Evaluation

A Study of the Effects of the Visual and Performing Arts in Healthcare

The research explores whether visual and performing arts could have an effect on psychological, physiological and biological outcomes of clinical significance.

Research & Evaluation

Arts in health: a review of the medical literature

This review of medical literature explores the relationship of the arts and humanities to healthcare, and the influence and effects of the arts on health.

Research & Evaluation

Evaluation of the Music in Healthcare Project 2000 – 2004

An evaluation of the Music in Healthcare Project: a partnership between Music Network and the Midland Health Board.

Research & Evaluation

Age & Opportunity Evaluation Arts in Care Settings Project

This report summarises the findings of an evaluation of the Arts in Care Settings Project.

Research & Evaluation

Music in Healthcare / Mental Health

An evaluation of the participative music programme designed by Music Network as part of Cork 2005 – European Capital of Culture.

Research & Evaluation

Mind Where You Look – Research Summary

A comparative study between a hospital and a gallery as sites for viewing art.

Research & Evaluation

GENNING UP: A Research Paper for Blue Drum on Community-based Arts in Health (DOC)

A research paper for Blue Drum on community-based arts in health.

Research & Evaluation

Dreams Project

A research report assessing the value of participation by patients, staff and community members in the Dreams Arts and Health visual art project in the Mater Hospital, Belfast.

Research & Evaluation

Report of the Review of Arts and Health Working Group

A report setting out the findings and recommendations of the Review of Arts and Health Working Group, which was set up by Harry Cayton, the National Director for Patient and the Public, to support him in advising the Department of Health on its role in relation to arts and health (UK).

Research & Evaluation

Towards Transformation: Exploring the impact of culture, creativity and the arts on health and wellbeing (PDF)

Exploring the impact of culture, creativity and the arts on health and wellbeing.

Research & Evaluation

Mental Health, Social Inclusion and Arts: developing the evidence base (PDF)

A research study that aimed to identify appropriate indicators and measures of mental health and social inclusion outcomes, and to develop and implement an evaluation framework based on those indicators and measures.

Research & Evaluation

Conversations in Colour (PDF)

Evaluation of an Arts for Health Partnership Programme 2005/6, West Cork.

Research & Evaluation

A Cure for the Soul? The benefit of live music in the General Hospital (PDF)

An evaluation of the benefit of live music performance in the Adelaide and Meath Incorporating the National Children's Hospital.

Research & Evaluation

The Benefit of Creative Writing for Patients in a Cardiac Rehabilitation Department (PDF)

An evaluation of the benefit of creative writing for patients in the Cardiac Rehabilitation Unit of Adelaide and Meath Incorporating the National Children's Hospital.

Research & Evaluation

The Benefits of Therapeutic Art Sessions in a Renal Dialysis Unit (PDF)

An evaluation of the benefits of therapeutic art sessions in the Renal Dialysis Unit of Adelaide and Meath Incorporating the National Children's Hospital.

Research & Evaluation

Invest to Save: Arts in Health Evaluation (PDF)

An evaluation exploring the impact of creativity, culture and the arts on health and wellbeing.

Research & Evaluation

Crossing the line (PDF)

An evaluation of a Musician in Residence programme in mental health settings, Waterford City.

Research & Evaluation

The ‘Open Window’ Study (PDF)

A PHD research study evaluating the psychological effect of 'Open Window' and exploring the experiences of people undergoing stem cell or bone marrow transplant for the treatment of haematological malignancies.

Research & Evaluation

Ceol le Chéile-Music Together Evaluation (PDF)

An evaluation of the participatory music programme delivered by Cork Arts and Health Programme, HSE South.

Research & Evaluation

An evaluation: The Bealtaine Festival (PDF)

This evaluation assesses the contribution of the Bealtaine festival, celebrating creativity in older age, to promoting the participation of older people in the arts in Ireland, and to improving the health and well-being of the people who participate.

Research & Evaluation

Hospital arts co-ordinators:an accidental profession? (PDF)

Research focusing on hospital based arts co-ordinators and their views on the challenges posed by their work.

Research & Evaluation

Invest to Save: Arts in Health — Reflections on a 3-year period of research and development in the North West of England (PDF)

A reflective account of a three-year mixed-methodological research and development project exploring creativity, culture and the arts on public health, taking national development in the field into account.

Research & Evaluation

Report on Interdisciplinary Arts in Health Project 2009 (PDF)

A report on arts in health based workshops involving an interprofessional engagement amongst arts and health students and mental health service users.

Research & Evaluation

What training do artists need to work in healthcare settings? (PDF)

Research that led to the development of a training course for artists working in health settings.

Research & Evaluation

Evaluation of Music in Renal Dialysis Programme 2009/2010 (PDF)

An evaluation of a participatory music programme in the Renal Dialysis Unit of Waterford Regional Hospital.

Research & Evaluation

Well into older age — Age & Opportunity and the evidence (PDF)

What research says about the value of promoting participation of older people.

Research & Evaluation

‘Creative Ageing’ A Practical Exploration of the Arts in the Healthcare of Older People (PDF)

A report that considers how arts-based activities can be deployed to complement traditional programmes of healthcare to improve the well being of older people with dementia.

Research & Evaluation

An Independent Evaluation of a Composer in Residence Report AMNCH 2010

An evaluation of a Composer in Residence project in the Stroke Unit of the Adelaide and Meath incorporating the National Children's Hospital (now Tallaght University Hospital).

Research & Evaluation

Helium Puppet Portal Project Evaluation (Master) (PDF)

An independent evaluation of a puppetry and technology project across four hospital environments.

Research & Evaluation

Helium Puppet Portal Project Evaluation (Summary) (PDF)

An independent evaluation of a puppetry and technology project across four hospital environments.

Research & Evaluation

An interim evaluation of the ‘Arts for Well-being’ social prescribing scheme in County Durham

This review considers firstly the policy context for social prescribing, the development of arts on prescription schemes, and issues for evaluation of this field of work.

Research & Evaluation

An Evidence Review of the Impact of Participatory Arts on Older People (PDF)

A review that verifies the positive impact participatory arts can have on the health and wellbeing of older people.

Research & Evaluation

Prescribed Culture: Summary of Research Findings

A summary of research findings following a prescribed culture project in the south of Sweden.

Research & Evaluation

Be Creative Be Well: arts, wellbeing and local communities, an evaluation (PDF)

A report that describes and evaluates the Be Creative Be Well project and the key role it has played within the integrated, community-led Well London programme.

National Creative Arts and Health Working Group

The National Creative Arts & Health Working Group, comprising Creative Ireland, Department of Health (Healthy Ireland), Health Service Executive (HSE), and The Arts Council, is currently developing a new 10-year Arts and Health Strategy for 2026 – 2036, due in November 2026.

Student Placements

The Arts & Health Student Training Portal provides student artists with volunteer placement opportunities to support and learn from a professional artist on an arts and health programme.

Find

The national arts and health website is delighted to announce that we will be offering two bursaries in 2022. The documentation bursary will support the production of a short film, audio documentary or publication about an arts and health project. The emerging artist reflective bursary is available for an early-career artist to reflect on their arts and health practice.

Useful Links

Information and links to national and international arts and health organisations, programmes and research networks.

Contact us

Phone: + 353 (0)51-842664 Email: info@artsandhealth.ie [addr]Address: artsandhealth.ie Réalta Centre for Arts & Health University Hospital Waterford Dunmore Road, Waterford, Ireland, X91 ER8E.[/addr].

Resources

Explore national and international resources in the field of arts and health.

Directory

The Directory contains information on arts and health programmes and key contacts in your area.

Inspiration

Opinion pieces, conversations, poems, artworks and chronicles to inspire you.

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artsandhealth.ie is an independent national website providing a focal point and resource for the emergent field of arts and health in Ireland via resource documents, project case studies, a directory of contacts, perspectives on a range of issues and current news.