Artform
59 results
Case Studies (25 results)
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
Daughters of the Revolution
Daughters of the Revolution is a theatre piece exploring women’s experience of maternity in Ireland.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Directory (8 results)
Directory
Aoife’s Clown Doctors Ireland
Aoife’s Clown Doctors provide professional clowning entertainment to children in Ireland’s hospital wards, to momentarily offer an escape from the stress and anxiety of the hospital setting for all family members, through laughter and games.
Directory
UL Hospitals Group
The Arts Committee in University Hospital Limerick was established in 2016.
Directory
Saolta Arts
Initiated by a generous long-term loan of over 100 works of Modern Irish Art by John and Patricia Hunt, Galway University Hospitals set up an Arts Committee in early 2003 to develop an arts programme for University Hospital Galway and Merlin Park University Hospital.
Directory
Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality
Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality has designed an arts-based approach to positive mental health promotion and suicide prevention.
Directory
St Luke’s General Hospital Kilkenny
St Luke's General Hospital is an acute hospital in Kilkenny City which provides acute healthcare services to the people of Carlow and Kilkenny.
Directory
MISA Creative Life Centre
The Creative Life Centre at Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA), St James’s Hospital, promotes and highlights the creativity of older people, enabling them to express themselves through art, sculpture, poetry, literature, music and drama.
Directory
National Centre for Arts and Health at Tallaght University Hospital
Our mission is ‘to provide a creative arts and health programme specific to patient, staff and healthcare department needs; that improves the hospital experience by making arts accessible to all.
Directory
Helium Arts
Helium Arts: • supports a dynamic, child-friendly, family centred, holistic approach to children’s medical provision, within community, primary, and acute healthcare contexts.
Perspectives (4 results)
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
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
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
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.
Videos (2 results)
Videos
A Bird At My Window and Other Stories
Transforming the bedsides of young patients into miniature theatre spaces, Sarah Fuller and Manuela Corbari share an enchanting collection of stories where the natural and human worlds are intertwined.
Videos
Stories from the Well-Field
Artist Tess Leak collaborated with a group of residents in St. Joseph’s Unit, Bantry General Hospital, puppeteer Eoin Lynch and composer Justin Grounds to create Stories from the Well-Field, bringing to life residents' poems about enduring childhood friendships. Awarded the 2018 artsandhealth.ie documentation bursary.
News (17 results)
Event
‘Theatre Room’ Workshop: A Smart D8 project in collaboration with GBHI and Outlandish Theatre
Are you a resident of Dublin 8 and interested in art, health and public spaces.
Event
The Tightrope Walker at First Fortnight Festival 2025
With humour and humility, The Tightrope Walker by Jenny Macdonald navigates a personal journey through the chaotic and profound territory of illness and recovery.
Event
(Dis)Placed: A Theatre of the Oppressed Festival
(Dis)Placed is a Theatre of the Oppressed festival that delves into the complex relationships between people and the land they call home.
Event
The Tightrope Walker at Tallaght University Hospital – Public Event
The Tightrope Walker by Jenny Macdonald navigates a personal journey through the chaotic and profound territory of illness and recovery with humour and humility.
Event
Illness as Metaphor by Dead Centre – Dublin Fringe Festival 2024
In her book Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag sets out to diagnose the problem with the way we think about illness.
Event
In Two Minds comes to Edinburgh Festival Fringe
In Two Minds is a deeply personal and life-affirming production by Limerick-based theatre artist Joanne Ryan which explores the realities of living with bipolar disorder and its effects on relationships and family.
Event
Puppetry Healing Stories in Hospital Care – Webinar
Puppetry Healing Stories in Hospital Care will showcase examples of contemporary practices by puppeteers using puppets in hospital settings. It will address the various contexts in which puppets can be used for both adults and children in hospitals, and will also examine some of the principles and ideas underlying these practices.
Event
Bedtime Adventures – An enchanting dreamscape for children with lifelong health conditions
Bedtime Adventures is an enchanting interactive dreamscape for children aged six and under with lifelong health conditions and/or additional needs.
Event
The Tightrope Walker at Creative Brain Week
The Tightrope Walker by Jennifer Macdonald navigates a personal journey through the chaotic and profound territory of illness and recovery with humour and humility.
Event
How Do We Care? SoloSIRENs Festival 2023
SoloSIRENs is a participatory festival bringing theatre artists and South County Dublin communities together to consider and explore the nature of care in our society.
Event
Theatre Room: Theatre-making in the healthcare environment | Arts + Health Conversation Series 2023
Explore the possibilities for theatre-making in the hospital environment in this online conversation hosted by artsandhealth.ie as part of our Arts and Health Conversation Series 2023.
News
Joanne Ryan announced as recipient of artsandhealth.ie Documentation Bursary 2023
The national arts and health website is delighted to announce that theatre artist Joanne Ryan has been awarded our 2023 Documentation Bursary to produce a radio documentary about In Two Minds.
Opportunity
Free creative workshops for people living with OCD – Exploring mental health through theatre
People living with OCD are invited to come together to reflect on their experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic.
News
World Mental Health Day: The Comfort Zone at MISA Creative Life Centre
Outlandish Theatre Platform has been working with staff and clients at the Martha Whiteway Day Hospital in Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA) since 2021.
Event
CORRUPTING CARE at Dublin Fringe Festival
CORRUPTING CARE is a live show from multidisciplinary Next Generation 2022 artist David McGovern that aims to disrupt and expand how we view both medical care and self-care.
Opportunity
Call for participants: Theatre collaboration with people living with long-term illness
Dead Centre, a Dublin-based theatre company, are looking to create a new project in collaboration with people living with long-term illness.
Event
In Conversation: Moments of Light – agency and connection though creative engagement with children and young people in health contexts
Join us on 28 June for an online conversation exploring arts for children in healthcare contexts.
