Children’s Health Ireland

The new children’s hospital will be a world-class facility to look after children and young people from all over Ireland who have complicated and serious illnesses and who are in need of specialist and complex care. The hospital and its two Outpatient and Urgent Care centres in Dublin will provide all the ‘local hospital’ paediatric secondary care to children in the local population. The project will bring together three existing children’s hospitals: Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin, Temple Street Children’s University Hospital and the National Children’s Hospital at Tallaght Hospital.

Areas of activities

Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) will run an Art in Health programme that will provide engaging, innovative and uplifting experiences that support an integrated approach to care for all the children, families, and staff who attend the hospital. The ultimate aim of the programme will be to improve quality of life and the lived experience of children, young people, families, staff and members of the public who are in the hospital. The arts will be used to transform the hospital environment and to create opportunities for engagement, expression, imagination, connection and self-identity. The programmes will take place across the whole hospital and satellite centres and will be delivered in both public spaces and at the point of care.

In the lead up to the opening of the new hospital in 2024, the focus is on integrating artworks into the new hospital and its Outpatient and Urgent Care centres through art commissions and other curatorial processes, supporting the cultural integration of the existing three hospitals and planning the Arts in Health programme for the future based on international best practice.

Mission / Aims

Priorities for 2017 – 2022:

• To create child-friendly, engaging healthcare environments through the integration of artworks and arts infrastructure into the new children’s hospital
• To enable creative collaboration between staff of the hospitals
• To engage patients in curatorial processes
• To support decision-making around the transfer of artworks from the three hospitals into the new children’s hospital
• To build the arts programme for the new children’s hospital and its satellites.