All delegates who have submitted successful abstracts, and are waiting to hear where they sit on the programme, should have information by Friday 24th February.

Information on key speakers and performers, call for abstracts, fees, registration and accommodation can all be found on the site and we have also included a blog (with the first post from our new student placement, Asta Elijoki from Finland) to keep everyone up to date in the run-up to the conference.

Jill McKeown, Artist-in-Residence with Craigavon and Banbridge Arts Care Committee, explains, “Service users and staff decided to make an artwork for the gable wall to provide a colourful backdrop to a new seating area which is being developed as a relaxation area. They want this area to be bright and welcoming as it was a dull, exposed and very windy space.

“The groups discussed possible themes and because it was such a windy area they decided up on the idea of kites and balloons blowing in the wind, which would also provide the opportunity to use bright colours in the piece.

The project involved the use of clay from its raw form, which was then moulded and drawn on to create the tiles for the finished piece. The initial tiles were dried, then ‘bisque fired’ and then returned to the group to paint with ceramic glazes before the final firing.”

Manager of Banbridge Social Education Centre Margaret McShane adds, “Previous projects in the Centre have involved mosaic and printmaking. On this occasion, Jill and the groups decided to use ceramics and they spent many sessions creating ceramic panels for the large area. The groups are always very enthusiastic and focussed hard on the project under the direction of Jill and assisted by care workers Iolanda and Alison.”

Unfolding Tales is a collaborative storybook that unfolds into a fifteen metre-long artwork.  Two artists, Rachael Bell and Arts Care Artist-in-Residence, Cheryl Bleakley invited patients from various wards in Musgrave Park Hospital to add their part to the evolving story.  Patients corresponded with each other through image, letter writing and the spoken word, each creating a page of the book.  Some of these artworks were also developed through workshops and correspondence with the involvement of other visual artists in Belfast and Berlin.

The Unfolded Tales spiral up the library’s central staircase under a video of a narrator, reading the story to library visitors.  Images of the hospital corridor ceilings flash overhead.  This is an exciting project with a beautiful aesthetic quality.  It captures the richness and uniqueness of life experience as people enter and leave the hospital, their stories overlapping for a short time.

Unfolding Tales is presented as Rachael Bell’s M.A. Art in Public project at the University of Ulster.

Arts Care is Northern Ireland’s leading Arts in Health Organisation and in 2012 it will celebrate 21 years of delivering high quality, sustainable arts and ClownDoctor programmes across a diverse range of healthcare services in all of Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Trusts. With an emphasis on a participatory approach, the Anniversary Conference will provide an opportunity for experts, and all those interested in Arts in Health Practice and Evaluation across the globe to come together. The aim of the conference is to explore, celebrate, share and gain in-depth knowledge of international working models of best arts in health practice and research development.

A separate website for the conference will shortly be live but, in the meantime, if  potential delegates have any queries, please email admin@artscare.co.uk. A link for accommodation can be found here

“Memory Wall”

An artwork created by the service users of Edenderry Day Centre

Tuesday 13th December at 11am

Edenderry House, Edenderry Day Centre, 18 Gilford Road, Portadown, BT63 5ED

RSPV to jill@jillmckeown.com

“Windy Day”

An artwork created by the service users of Banbridge SEC

Friday 16th December at 1.45pm

Banbridge Social Education Centre, 170 Castlewellan Road, Banbridge, BT32 3SE

RSPV to jill@jillmckeown.com

Maiden Voyage Dance Company partnered Arts Care to host the special performance of Stevie Prickett’s Dance exposed commission Not Now!… Later! to staff, patients and visitors in atrium at the Mater hospital in north Belfast on Friday 21 October. The performance was staged as part of Arts Care’s Dance on-going Dance in Health programme at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.

The organic backdrop for the dance performance was the on-going activity of hospital life on a Friday morning and involved hospital staff passing the dance space on their way to get their winter flu injection at the nurses station installed temporarily alongside the dance installation in the Atrium. Large cumbersome trollies full of laundry bags and screeching wheels trundled parallell to the dance space adding incongruously to the existing dance soundscape.  The incidental dance audience was scattered across adjoining glass, enclosed corridors that provided excellent viewpoints for the dance performances. One member of the unsuspecting audience was a young child nose pressed poignantly against the glass window, peering down at the young dancers. Other visitors, staff and patients in the hospital meandering down three levels of stairwells halted every now and then to catch glimpse of the on-going dance. Others sat in the small group of audience chairs surrounding the performance space.

The energy of the young fit dancers as they explored space, relationship and levels within a wonderful natural lit atrium, brought a specific energy of well-being and intention that illuminated the clinical hospital environment for 30 minutes out of the busy 24 hour incessant hospital activity. Arts Care continuous to provide regular music/dance performance within healthcare environments as an integral part of its arts delivery programme.

Arts Care would like to take this opportunity to say a very big thank you to Artistic Director of Maiden Voyage, Nicola Curry and the dancers for their commitment to realising this dynamic dance performance in such a vital environment.