Independent Arts and Health Organisation
Contact
Helene Hugel, Artistic Director / CEO
Phone
044-9396960
info@helium.ie
Web address
www.helium.ie
Address
22 Pearse Street,
Mullingar,
Co. Westmeath
N91 VYP0
Artform(s)
Multidisciplinary, Visual Art
Healthcare context(s)
Acute Hospitals, Children, Community settings
Helium Arts' Pop Up Picnic at IMMA, Cruinniú na nÓg 2018. Photo credit: Tara Thomas.
Helium Arts is the national children’s arts and health organisation. Helium Arts is committed to nurturing and honouring creativity as a natural resource for a child’s wellbeing.
Mission / Aims
Helium Arts:
• supports a dynamic, child-friendly, family centred, holistic approach to children’s medical provision, within community, primary, and acute healthcare contexts.
• produces creative arts interventions for, with, and by young people which respond appropriately and adequately to their needs. Helium’s services are participatory and collaborative.
• works with highly skilled artists in residence to develop meaningful, arts engagements at a local level. They work with respect to the healthcare setting as a community, responding to patients, families, visitors, and staff and facilitating partnerships between departments.
•aims to uphold the arts and health field as a creatively charged environment with which artists can engage, where artforms can be challenged, enriched, and extended to produce ground-breaking, inventive new work which engages with the development of children’s arts in Ireland.
Areas of activities
• The Creative Health Hub programme is an exciting new approach to bringing our innovative, multidisciplinary creative projects to many more children and teenagers across Ireland. In each Creative Health Hub location (currently Cork, Galway and Limerick), Helium’s artists deliver a continuous programme of activity connecting between hospitals, community and public settings.
• Early Years: Since 2009, Helium Arts has brought creative projects to children aged 0-3 and their parents in a variety of settings, including health centres, child development clinics, early intervention centres, community and arts venues. Helium’s current early years project is Pop Up Picnic, developing multi-sensory performance experiences for children under three with complex needs.
• The Professional Development Programme offers training and support to artists and healthcare staff wishing to engage in arts and health practice.