Involving patients in Cork's City of Culture programme has led to some unusual ventures in art and experimental performances. Nicoline Greer reports
It's not art therapy, but patients in Cork hospitals, day care centres and residential units are getting a healthy dose of music, visual art, drama and dance as part of an unusual City of Culture venture.
Almost 40 of the Cork 2005 cultural initiatives involve patients in various arts projects. While some of these will be extensions of existing arts projects in the city, others are specifically tailored to the patients.
The most recent venture is Postcards, a project in St Finbarr's Hospital, which invites the public to send in postcards, photographs or an original piece of artwork to the patients. The postcards will be exhibited in the hospital and later at the Triskel Arts Centre, but the real value, says artist Charlotte Donovan, who has been co-ordinating arts projects in the hospital since January, is "just that people have taken the time to make the postcard and put a stamp on it".
In another project at O'Connell Court, a shelter for homeless people and the elderly, Molly Sturges, an artist from Colorado, has been directing performance pieces involving the residents of the centre. The result is Moments, experimental performance pieces using video, sound art, choreography and movement.
Donovan believes the benefits of involving patients in arts projects are obvious. "Patients are delighted to have something to focus their minds on," she says. "I see the benefits in self-confidence and self-esteem. They are able to make a valuable contribution and make choices and that is something that has often been taken away from them."
Donovan has been mixing art and health for 10 years, initially in her native Scotland and subsequently in Brussels as part of its City of Culture year in 2000. As a student studying art she became disillusioned with the idea of being a solitary artist creating artworks and so began working in hospitals, which she found more rewarding.
Anne O'Connor, Cork 2005's culture and health manager, emphasises that none of the artists in this initiative is meant to be engaging in any kind of art therapy but says the projects can still provide benefits to patients. "The difference is that there are clinical outcomes to art therapy. None of these artists is a qualified therapist - though it is often said that the process is therapeutic," she says.
Donovan says the fact that she is not an art therapist and does not use the work as any kind of clinical tool has its benefits. "As an artist, I have the privilege of being able to work with patients on an equal level. Sometimes patients become used to everyone around them having more power than them," she says.
Donovan is overwhelmed by the reaction from the people she works with, particularly in a place like a disabled ward where patients can be resident for a long time. When patients and staff recently painted a mural of European landmarks on the walls of the hospital courtyard, there was "an outpouring of appreciation and emotion".
"One residential patient told me that he had always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower and knew that there was no chance that he would ever see it in real life. But he told me how happy he was that he would now be able to see it every day because it had been painted on the wall," says Donovan.
"It's very different from what we normally do," says Rebecca Loughry, principal community worker, social inclusion for the HSE Southern Area. The HSE and Cork 2005 went into partnership and created a working group at an early stage of Cork 2005 to see how people in the health service could access the events which were happening as part of the City of Culture year.
"The collaboration between Cork 2005 and the HSE has been very positive for everyone," adds Loughry.
When Cork 2005 finishes at the end of the year, these projects and their funding will also end. "We were always very conscious that we shouldn't do something that would end on December 31st," says Loughry, but, as yet, no funding has been secured to continue the initiatives.