Participants
Participants were brought together through the recruitment, training, and continuous professional development provided to a network of local artist-facilitators and support workers who ran CCN workshops consecutively in Limerick, Mallow, Bantry and Cahirciveen between April and October 2023.
As with all IHF’s CCNs, each was linked to local supporters, such as bereavement networks, HSE, families, and friends, with projects building from local circumstance and opportunity. In total, 53 workshops were facilitated and attended by circa 330 people. Together they gently explored loss and how compassion connects through a variety of creative practices, such as poetry, music, art, photography, printing, collage, drama, and sculpture.
Caherciveen
Nancy Holmes-Smith (Artist) and Tara Donoghue (Artist / Photographer) used practical hands-on work to explore ephemeral creation and photography, voice and drama, every week at Cahirciveen’s Library. Additional support and resources were generously provided by Kerry Arts Office, Kerry County Council Lead for Older People, Kerry Education and Training Board, Kerry Library, Age Friendly Ireland, and Healthy Ireland through the CHO Arts and Culture Lead. HSE Kerry Mental Health Services also supported this initiative by designating a mental health nurse to attend the initial group.
Limerick
Led by Ella Daly and supported by Dominic Campbell, IHF’s Arts and Cultural Manager, this CCN combined making with talking by exploring “what makes home” using visual arts and printing. Participants were invited to bring along images of lost loved ones or places or things for adapting and printing onto fabric and bags. Additional support and resources were generously provided by Citizen Innovation Lab, Limerick Arts Office, University of Limerick (especially the Department of Community Arts), Fab Lab, the Paul Partnership Group, Limerick Traveller Health Group, and Headway, among others.
Mallow and Bantry
Experienced arts and health practitioner Tess Leak led sessions in Bantry and Mallow. Tess was an integral part of our original series of CCN pilot sessions in 2022, where she established a replicable approach using haiku poetry as a starting point for participants. Tess was supported in Mallow by visual artists Ai Wise and Maria Jönsson Kent, who brought new skills to the programme. Additional support and resources were generously provided by St Goban’s College of Further Education and Training, Kerry County Council, Age Friendly Ireland, Healthy Ireland, Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, and Kerry Education and Training Board.
In Bantry, another experienced practitioner, Becky Hatchett, worked alongside Tess. In addition to exploring haiku, Becky brought in sculpture using natural materials as starting points for conversations, often focused on impermanence. Gorgeously illustrated Haiku poetry booklets were also produced by both groups. Additional support and resources were generously provided by Le Chéile Family Resource Centre, Cork County Council Arts Office, Community Health Lead in North Cork, West End Studios, and Mallow Arts Festival.
Aims
The aim is to explore how creativity helps establish safe places where people can talk openly about grief and loss. Through the power of making something together, participants are supported by artist-facilitators to break down any barriers, fears, and anxieties they may hold around loss. We do this secure in the knowledge that the arts, in all their forms, help people to navigate difficult and life-changing moments. They always have.
Aligning with the Impact Fund’s ambition of enhancing the physical and mental health of local communities, four spaces were opened in Cork, Limerick and Kerry. Support also included tailored capacity building to encourage growth and impact amplification.
Methods
Why use creativity and the arts to explore grief and loss? And what have they got to do with health? In short, the arts help people process sensation into meaning. Crafting settles the mind. Singing soothes the soul. Dancing loosens muscle memory. Creativity re-opens spirits closed by sadness. Research in this area (e.g. WHO Synthesis Document and forthcoming Lancet Specials) indicates how engagement with creativity when challenged by grief has many benefits, including reducing the risk of developing physical and mental health issues.
Moreover, creative work can enable people to address the impact of different types of grief such as ambiguous loss, which might be associated with caring for someone with Alzheimer’s. It may provide an outlet for Unresolved Grief which can arise from sudden bereavement and be shouldered for decades. Or act as a salve to the isolation that so often accompanies grief.
People finding their experience reflected in that of others is profound. Time and again people express surprise and relief, recognising, articulating and reducing the burden of grief and loss through creative practice and conversation. As one male participant said:
“It was like a nest … you came in and sat down and listened to other people’s stories and then you say sure my story is something similar. It gave me time to grieve. I probably said things here I’ve never said in my life.”
The simple act of making something allows people to think and feel differently. Alongside academic research in this area, we know from previous experience facilitating CCNs, linking experienced artist-facilitators with a wider public at community level in properly resourced sessions, initiates meaningful conversations on death, dying, and grief, and can reduce the risk of developing mental and other health issues. As a female participant said:
“We all felt a feeling of recovery and healing.”
Obviously dying, death and bereavement is everyone’s experience. However, not everyone wants to or can talk about it. Through IHF’s Arts and Cultural Engagement programme, we’re impacting the culture that surrounds this ubiquitous experience – creativity enables conversation. Conversation leads to better understanding. In turn, this enables improved connection, ultimately reducing unnecessary harm to self and others.
Artistic Outputs
Along with hosting events, such as coffee mornings and exhibitions, two beautifully illustrated Haiku poetry collections were also produced: ‘Love Falls as Water’ and ‘A Little Book of Poetry’ by the Mallow and Bantry CCN participants.
Evaluation Methodology
Rethink Ireland’s Impact Fund for Munster produced a completion report of awardees’ projects.
An independent evaluation was produced by social impact consultant Michael Foley and 1OpenDialogue, who also advised IHF on producing a Theory of Change, a model for evaluation, and financial modeling for future CCNs.
Alongside this, IHF produced a short documentary video about the CCN in Cahirciveen enabling participants, artist-facilitators, and support workers to speak for themselves.
Evaluation Outcomes
All CCN artist-facilitators, supports workers, and many participants completed extensive evaluations. These showed 90% of participants surveyed would recommend the programme. All facilitators firmly believed such projects had a strong impact on individuals, communities, and organisations. Entitled “We’ve Shared Something in this Room” the full Evaluation Report is available for download here.
Also available is the Fund’s Completion Report, which features a case study articulating the strong collective and individual impact these CCNs had on participants. Download the Completion Report here.
A video documenting the Cahirciveen CCN reflects on this programme of work. It focuses on the role of this project to connect existing agencies and illustrates the challenges presented by the rural location. It also demonstrates how CCNs are designed to knit together existing local resources to benefit people struggling with grief and the impact this can have on health, particularly on those who are isolated. As Cork Kerry Community Healthcare Healthy Ireland Arts and Culture Lead, Dr Sheelagh Broderick, said:
“The Health Service has realised that it’s very important for people to be connected, to have opportunities for making meaning together. So, when you put those two things together, what you get is arts and health. It’s a very new way of working, but has been proven through research internationally and nationally, that it’s beneficial to participants.”
Watch the video here.
Documentation and Dissemination
The core ambition of IHF Arts and Cultural Engagement Programme is to make art “ordinary in its quantum” — readily available to everyone who might benefit from creativity in the community. Which is why we have made these evaluation and funding reports available to read and share online, along with the documentary video and Haiku poetry collections produced by the CCNs in Bantry and Mallow.
To learn more about the enormous value of this work in promoting physical and psychological wellbeing through artistic engagement visit: www.hospicefoundation.ie/arts
Partners
Overall:
2Into3 (social impact consultancy)
1OpenDialogue
Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre
Bantry:
St Goban’s College of Further Education and Training, Kerry County Council, Age Friendly Ireland, Healthy Ireland, Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, and Kerry Education and Training Board.
Mallow:
Le Chéile Family Resource Centre, Cork County Arts Office, Community Health Lead in North Cork, West End Studios, and Mallow Arts Festival.
Limerick:
Citizen Innovation Lab, Limerick Arts Office, University of Limerick (especially Dept of Community Arts), Fab Lab, the Paul Partnership Group, Limerick Traveller Health Group and Headway.
Cahirciveen:
Kerry Arts Office, Kerry County Council Lead for Older People, Kerry Education and Training Board, Kerry Library, Age Friendly Ireland, and Healthy Ireland through the CHO Arts and Culture Lead. HSE Kerry Mental Health Services also supported this initiative by designating a mental health nurse to attend the initial group.
