Healthcare Context
Healthcare Context
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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’.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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
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
PHOTOVOICES is a collaborative arts project examining through the camera lens the lived experiences of mental health in the Midlands of Ireland in 2017.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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.
Case Studies
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
Illuminate is a film and mental health programme that takes place as part of Cork Film Festival.
Case Studies
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
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
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 is a collaborative arts project between Jigsaw Offaly, Headstrong and Offaly Youth Theatre exploring youth mental health.
Case Studies
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 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 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 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
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 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
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
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
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.
Directory
An initiative of Cork Mental Health Services, 49 North Street in Skibbereen was established in 2017 as a community-based hub for creativity, recovery and wellness in West Cork.
Directory
The policy at the core of Waterford City and County Council’s provision is ‘access for all to arts activities of all kinds’ and this extends to the arts and health sector.
Directory
Waterford Healing Arts is Ireland’s longest established arts and health organisation, founded in 1993 at University Hospital Waterford (UHW).
Directory
Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality has designed an arts-based approach to positive mental health promotion and suicide prevention.
Directory
MusicAlive is Ireland’s specialist organisation dealing with the provision, development and promotion of music in healthcare and community settings.
Directory
Arts Ability is an inclusive, participatory arts programme which celebrates the artistic and creative imagination of people who experience mental health problems and/or intellectual, physical or sensory disabilities.
Perspectives
‘Memory, for migrants, is almost always the memory of loss.'
Perspectives
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Podcasts
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
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
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
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
Dylan Tighe's Record at Cork Midsummer Festival in 2012 explored his experiences of depression and living with mental illness.
Videos
Do we have the “right” story? is a narrative storytelling research project exploring the experiences of those living and working in mental health community residences in HSE South East Community Healthcare.
Videos
Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust commissioned visual artist Finbar 247 to see if art can change how we feel in a hospital.
Guidelines
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
A model of best practice for using drama workshops and professional theatre performances to promote positive mental health Author(s): Mary Moynihan & Paul Kennedy.
Policies & Strategies
This five year plan includes action areas focused on promoting positive mental health across the population and among HSE staff. There is a specific action to strengthen the role of arts and creativity in the promotion of mental health and wellbeing within the HSE and HSE-funded agencies.
Policies & Strategies
The HSE Social Prescribing Framework supports the development of social prescribing within the HSE. It sets out a common approach for the delivery of social prescribing across the organisation.
Research & Evaluation
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
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
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
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
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
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
A UK evidence-based guide on the benefits of group singing for mental health and wellbeing.
Research & Evaluation
Arts + Minds commissioned Lydia Sapouna to investigate the impact and potential of the arts within mental health care.
Research & Evaluation
An evaluation of the participative music programme designed by Music Network as part of Cork 2005 – European Capital of Culture.
Research & Evaluation
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.
Articles & Documentation
Visual artist Catarina Araújo designed her first arts and health project with mental health professionals in Cork to explore their experiences of Covid-19. The need for time and space to pause reverberated throughout the project and has informed Catarina’s reflection, funded by the artsandhealth.ie emerging artist bursary 2023.
Articles & Documentation
Other People’s Practices brings artists and health service users of the Central Mental Hospital together to collaborate on projects. Founder and Director John Conway was awarded the artsandhealth.ie documentation bursary in 2019 to create a publication about the programme.
Articles & Documentation
Denis Roche reflects on this socially engaged project made in collaboration with Brian Maguire, Emma Finucane and people using the mental health services in Co. Carlow (2011-2013).
Articles & Documentation
Spears of Daylight contempory arts exhibition, inspired by the creative writing of service users at St.
Event
The NI Mental Health Arts Festival is back for its 11th edition, with the festival theme of CathARTSis.
News
Are you between 16 and 25 years old.
Event
The Colossus is a socially engaged art project exploring North Clondalkin’s unspoken and unacknowledged oral histories related to loss and bereavement by suicide – colossal things of enormous size and importance.
Event
Well Festival of Arts and Wellbeing and West Cork Feel Good Festival are hosting a special networking event for artists, healthcare professionals and arts managers working in arts and mental health.
Event
Well Festival of Arts and Wellbeing 2025 will take place in venues across Waterford city and county, with an inspirational line-up of over 30 fun, free and sociable arts events for all ages.
Event
Healing Through Photography is a unique two-day conference hosted by Belfast Exposed that delves into the transformative power of photography as a medium for healing, growth, and connection.
Opportunity
Creative Ireland Limerick, Limerick City and County Council and the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) seek an Artistic Facilitator.
Opportunity
Kildare County Council Arts Service invites individual artists and/or collectives in any artform to apply for the First Fortnight Award 2025.
Event
Every January, the First Fortnight Festival challenges mental health stigma and promotes mental health wellbeing through national arts and culture events.
News
The Jameel Arts & Health Lab, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation, is embarking on a series of arts and health policy briefs to synthesize evidence and share examples of how engaging in the arts contribute to health and wellbeing across the lifespan and across settings.
Event
Arts Culture Health and Wellbeing Scotland has teamed up with the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival to curate a programme of online discussions covering key themes, best practice, available tools and more.
Opportunity
Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival (NIMHAF) is seeking a Creative Programme Coordinator to lead a team of volunteers, freelance creative professionals and event co-ordinators.
News
Safe Harbour is a free illustrated story book for children who have been bereaved by suicide. Published by the HSE in June 2024, Safe Harbour is written by Patricia Forde – Ireland's Laureate na nÓg – and illustrated by visual artist Bronagh Lee.
Event
The Centre of Everything celebrates the creative work of over fifty artists who participate in Arts Ability, an initiative of Wexford County Council, the HSE, and Wexford Mental Health Association.
Event
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
Creative spaces of sanctuary are vibrant assemblages where artists and communities with lived experience of forced displacement come together to co-create dynamic spaces that embody an expansive sense of hope and possibility.
Event
A Sense of Self, a new art exhibition by participants from the Iontas Arts and Mental Health Programme, will be on show at Dungarvan Library until 12 May 2024.
Event
The Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival (NIMHAF) celebrates its 10th anniversary in May 2024.
Opportunity
As part of The Blooming Minds Club at Creative Spark Dundalk, artist and art therapist Jenny Slater will present a morning workshop for professional artists on 28 May 2024.
News
The Blooming Minds Club is a youth-led artist-supported creative arts hub for young people experiencing mental health difficulties based at Creative Spark Dundalk, with outreach workshops in Drogheda, County Louth.
Opportunity
All Irish Dance’s evidence-based training empowers you with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to lead fun, inclusive adaptive céilí activities in your local community or care setting.
Event
When the Last Drop Saw the Sky is a short film about the positive mental health journeys of members of Suaimhneas Clubhouse HSE/EVE in Raheny.
Opportunity
The second Culture & Mental Health international conference takes place in Ghent, Belgium on 28 and 29 November 2024.
Opportunity
Kildare County Council Arts Service invites individual artists and/or collectives in any artform to apply for the First Fortnight Award 2024.
News
A cocoon evokes warmth, a safe haven, a nurturing space. Visual socially engaged artist Catarina Araújo designed her first arts and health project in 2021 with mental health professionals in Cork to explore their experiences of Covid-19.
Event
Every January, the First Fortnight festival challenges mental health stigma and promotes mental health wellbeing through national arts and culture events.
News
The Creativity for Wellbeing Workbook by Mental Health Ireland uses creative tools to guide you on your journey of self-discovery and wellbeing.
News
Áit Eile is a new creative arts hub for young people living with mental health difficulties in Louth and Meath.
Event
Our Vision Our Voice 2023 is the continuation of a six year collaboration between Mullingar Mental Health Association, HSE Mental Health Services (service users and Occupational Therapy staff) and visual artist Rosaleen Heavin.
Event
West Cork Feel Good Festival takes place every autumn, organised by 49 North Street - a creative space in Skibbereen that promotes positive mental health and wellbeing - and a broad range of community partners.
Event
Bookings are now open for Arts + Health: Check Up Check In 2023, the annual national arts and health gathering led by Réalta, the National Body for Arts + Health in Ireland. This year's event is taking place in partnership with Creative Life at Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA).
Event
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
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
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has launched the fourteenth edition of its Civil Society Prize.
News
Arts + Health: Check Up Check In 2023 will take place on Wednesday 25 October at Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing, St James's Hospital in Dublin.
News
The artsandhealth.ie emerging artist bursary affords time and space for an early career artist to reflect on their arts and health practice.
Event
Minding Creative Minds, Ireland’s mental health and wellbeing support programme for the Irish creative community, is hosting a workshop series on developing and managing a creative career and wellness tools for creatives and freelancers this May and June.
Event
There is a significant amount of work happening at the interface between research on mental health and Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). This one-day event hosted at the Institute of Group Analysis, London brings together artists, curators, clinical practitioners, patient advocates, academics and activists.
Event
On 17 May 2023, the Royal Academy of Dance in London will be marking mental health awareness week with a conversation between Tim Arthur, RAD Chief Executive and Steven McRae, Principal of The Royal Ballet and RAD Ambassador.
Event
Cocooning – Catch a Breath is an immersive and interactive sculptural exhibition arising from a socially engaged art project with artist Catarina Araújo and mental health professionals based in Cork City.
Event
Waterford Healing Arts Trust is delivering a practical CPD workshop for musicians working in mental health settings, or interested in doing so, as part of the Well Festival of Arts & Wellbeing 2023.
News
Minding Creative Minds is Ireland’s first 24/7 mental health and wellbeing support programme for the Irish creative community, delivered in association with Spectrum Life across the 32 counties and to Irish creatives overseas.
Opportunity
Kildare County Council has announced two awards for 2023 to support creative projects and artists working in the area of Arts, Health & Wellbeing in the county.
Event
First Fortnight is Ireland’s annual Mental Health Art & Culture Festival, challenging mental health stigma and promoting mental health wellbeing nationally through art and culture.
News
Mapping Arts and Health Across the Midlands is a new research report published by the Arts Office of Laois County Council and partner organisations Offaly County Council Arts Office, Westmeath County Council Arts Office, Anam Beo, Helium Arts, Music Generation (Offaly/Westmeath) and Waterford Healing Arts Trust (WHAT).
Opportunity
People living with OCD are invited to come together to reflect on their experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Event
Learn about the practicalities of developing and delivering arts initiatives in acute and community mental health settings in partnership with artists and arts professionals.
News
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
Film director Aoise Tutty Jackson's ongoing collaboration with Music Alive and Skibbereen’s pioneering mental health service, 49 North Street, will form part of an interactive showcase on 13 October at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre.
Event
West Cork Feel Good Festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary, with events happening across six West Cork towns and villages - Ballydehob, Bantry, Clonakilty, Dunmanway, Leap, and Skibbereen - until 19 October.
Opportunity
Voices Of Culture is a structured dialogue between the cultural sector in the European Union and the European Commission.
Event
An Open Door for Bealtaine is an informal musical gathering presented by 49 North Street in association with MusicAlive and the Skibbereen Family Resource Centre.
In Conversation
Do we have the “right” story.
Sign up to our e-bulletin to keep up to date with the latest news and opportunities.