Welcome to Create News

This is the seventh edition of Create News. CreateNews is published twice a year in March andSeptember. It is sent free of charge, features a guestwriter and offers the latest information on Createevents and services.

If you do not wish to receive further editions, pleasewrite or email us at info@create-ireland.ie. Youwill automatically receive copies unless you ask usto remove your details from the list.

If you would like to receive a personal copy ofCreate News please email info@create-ireland.ieand include details of name, address and postcode.

Create, 10/11 Earl Street South, Dublin 8www.create-ireland.ie

Navigating the CommonsRadio Documentaries

Create in partnership with artist Patricia Baker sup-ported by Sound and Vision BCI funding scheme,broadcast Navigating the Commons an audio journey.

This journey had two phases, one route along theLower Bann to Lough Neagh and the other along theShannon from Portumna to Athlone.

The first audio journey broadcast at 6pm on Sundaythe 20th September and the second audio journeybroadcast at 6pm on Sunday the 27th Septemberand are available to listen to on Northern Sound:www.northernsound.ie and Shannonside FM:www.shannonside.ie

Vital Signs: Arts & Health inContext, An Arts CouncilInitiative

Vital Signs is a programme of arts and health eventstaking place in Dublin in October 2009. It includes aone-day conference in the Royal College ofPhysicians on October 15, a national exhibition infive venues in Dublin 8 from October 14 - 21, and aseries of opinion pieces about arts and health prac-tice. Vital Signs is an Arts Council initiative, devel-oped and delivered in association with Create, thenational development agency for collaborative arts.The exhibition is curated by Michelle Browne.

Please see www.vitalsigns.artscouncil.ie for fulldetails of the Vital Signs programme. You can alsoemail Mathilde Veldt at vitalsigns@artscouncil.ie

New Audio on create-exchange.ie

Artist Faisal Abdu’Allah asks ‘What isn’t sociallyengaged?. Emily Kyriakides talks about mentoring,as part of the Arts Council funded initiativebetween Create and Common Ground andCatherine Joyce and Åsa Simma discuss Saami andTraveller culture with Ray Yeates. Listen to them allat www.create-exchange.ie

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Annette Moloneydiscusses Arts and Health

Research Through Conversation

Artist: Helene Hugel, The Bedmaker, 2009, Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin and The National Children's Hospital, Tallaght.

Artist in the Community Scheme:Four EssaysPublication from Create in partnership with the Arts Council

To launch Artist in the Community Scheme: Four Essays, Create in partnership with theArts Council and in association with Tallaght Community Arts, will host a celebrationon 5 November, at RuaRed, South Dublin Arts Centre, Tallaght from 4pm – 6pm.

The book shows how the Scheme through the years has become a key mechanismthrough which collaborative arts is now understood as a vibrant and dynamic contem-porary art practice. To book your place at the launch, email communications@create-ireland.ie

As part of Placing Voices;Voicing Places Create commissioned writer and theatre maker Ursuala Rani Sarma andvisual artist Sean Lynch to work collaboratively with local residents and communities of Clanbrassil Street,Dublin. The artists sought to uncover new meanings and approaches to the street to excavate an alternativereading of heritage as a set of cultural memories. For further information on the project and to see examplesof the contemporary arts projacts produced please visit www.create-ireland.ie/projectsandinitiatives

Voicing Places; Placing Voices is a partnetship between Create, UCD Schools of Archaelogy, Sociologyand Cultural Policy and Dublin City Council. The project was funded through the Heritage Council.

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Artist in the Community Scheme Second Round 2009 Successful applicants for Round Two in 2009 were:

Phase 1Research + Development Awards(artist and community, artform)

Grace Dyas, Rialto Community Drug Team, theatre;Sarah Wood, Guild of Outstanding Outcasts, the-atre; Rebecca Moran, Ceart PatientWise, theatre / lit-erature; Laura Fitzgerald, Respond HousingAssociation, visual arts; Jessica Foley, St Georges HillPrimary School / The Market Studios / Local fruitmarket vendors and traders, visual arts; ChristinaGangos-Klien, Limerick Community EducationNetwork & Limerick VEC, film; Adam Burthom,Carrick on Shannon Car Boot Sale, visual arts; MarieBrett, Cork University Hospital Maternity Unit &Ballyphehane & Togher Community Art & CraftInitiative, visual arts; Carolann Courtney, ArasChronain Intercultural Centre & Clondalkin YouthBand, film; Monica de Bath, Bord na Móna workers,visual art; John Byrne, Theologians, visual arts;Carol Kavanagh, Fourwinds Lithuanian School,visual arts; Cathy Henderson, Education UnitWheatfield Prison, visual arts.

Phase 2Project Realisation Awards (community, artist, artform)

White Oaks Rehabilitation Centre residents, JoannaMcGlynn, visual arts; Comhairle na nÓg / GalwayArts Centre, Alan Bulfin, visual arts (radio); St.Kevin’s Family Resource Centre, Aileen Lambert,visual arts; Irish Chinese Culture & SportsAssociation, Jay Koh, visual arts; Focus Ireland, GúnaNua Theatre Company, theatre; Rialto Youth Project,Fiona Whelan, visual arts; The Belvedere YouthClub, Katie Lincoln, film; Oige Na Gaeltachta, KevinO’Shanahan / Ríonach Ní Néill, music / dance.

The Panel included lens based artist AnthonyHaughey; Caoimhín Corrigan, Arts officer, CountyLeitrim, Director of The DOCK and Irish commis-sioner for Venice 2009; Michelle Browne, visualartist/curator; Dr George Seremba, playwright andactor; Liz Burns, Development Manager, Fire StationArtists Studio; Sheila Gorman, (observer, ArtsParticipation Officer, Arts Council) and EmmaGeraghty arts student Dublin Institute ofTechnology (Create Learning Development alumnistudent observer).

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Artist: Helene Hugel, The Bedmaker, 2009, Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin and The National Children's Hospital, Tallaght.

Artist: Paul Gregg, Subaquatic Dublin 2003, Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin

Artist: Denis Roche, A Clinically Useful Artwork ? Part 1+ 2, 2006, St James's Hospital, Dublin

Contemporary arts practice is increasingly

integrated into healthcare settings in Ireland,

allowing for the creative expression of our

own sense of humanity and at times giving

voice to our isolation and loneliness. But how

do we articulate the value of integrating arts

practice into healthcare situations and why

place art and artists in such loaded contexts?

These questions formed the basis of a dialogue with a number ofthe artists featured in the Vital Signs exhibition and conference1

and discussion began by teasing out the multiple definitions ofthe term ‘value’. Expressions of worth or importance changeaccording to the context of the conversation, value can have dif-ferent weightings and meanings depending on who you are talk-ing to, including monetary value, social value and cultural value.Reflecting on the nature of arts and health practice, and its experi-ential value to participants, artists described healthcare environ-ments as being particularly charged, filled with immediacy, attimes existing on the pivot of life and death and infused with fun-damental responsibilities especially for staff and serviceproviders.

Hospitals and healthcare institutions have a presumed absence ofcreativity and were portrayed as quite inaccessible places, fre-quently enclosing what society seeks to block out. Curator ClaireDoherty speaks of the significance of context in contemporaryarts practice by rendering it an ‘impetus, hindrance, inspiration andresearch subject for the process of making art.’2

AnnetteMoloney discusses Artsand Health

The arts practices featured in the VitalSigns exhibition recognise the opportunityto develop creative and collaborative rela-tionships in healthcare settings often illus-trating that artists do not have a monopolyon creativity. For these artists researchthrough conversation provides a platformfrom which conditions of trust develop,allowing them to explore the quiet narra-tives of people and place. This requires con-scientious listening on the part of the artistand a willingness to tread carefully at theearly ‘buy in’ stages of the process of work-ing collaboratively. The artists described anarrative gathering agenda, one whichrequires an almost ‘ghost dynamic’ whenworking in situ, and highlighted the needfor ‘respectful listening, to all those involved,by all those involved.' The value of listeningis supported by psychologist Marie Murraywho writes that ‘listening is an art. It is anart perfected over a lifetime. And while it maybe easy to speak, it is not always easy to listen:carefully, conscientiously, respectfully and toengage in no other activity than the act ofattending to what another person has to say.’ 3

1 The Vital Signs: Arts and Health in Context exhibition

and conference is an Arts Council initiative developed and

delivered in association with Create [14-21 Oct 2009].

See www.vitalsigns.artscouncil.ie.

2 Claire Doherty, ‘The New Situationists’,

Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation

(London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004) p. 7

3 Marie Murray, ‘The Art of Good Listening’, published in

The Irish Times, 20 Nov 2007.

4 Claire Doherty, ‘The New Situationists’,

Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation

(London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004) p. 11

The inclusion of professional documentation and evaluation is seenas one means of increasing the visibility of arts and health practicethereby adding to the debate on its value. This allows artists to pres-ent and represent projects, often arising out of inaccessible places,to a broader public audience thereby opening up further dialogueswith participants, their families, staff and stakeholders and alsofacilitating critical debate.

Validation through the supports and resources available to arts andhealth practice was discussed ranging from funding supports butalso reflecting the broader definition of resources to include time,knowledge and experience. At times when working with a numberof arts partners or health institutions to realise a project the processof pivoting one form of support off another, a kind of ‘institutionalbouncing’, was seen as effective.

Workshops, while seen as an opportunity for the exchange of skillsor for creative contact between artists and participants or serviceusers, were considered quite a formal route to explore the narrativesand complexities of a healthcare environment and artists reiteratedthe value of research through conversation. Claire Doherty con-firms this by stating that artists ‘resist the ascribed role of witness,often choosing to research or observe the overlooked.’ 4

The challenge inherent in arts and health practice is to allow artiststo do what they do best – to offer us back a considered and respon-sive view of a charged environment. One conclusion drawn was thatgood art shares the enthusiasm and passion of the artist and everyinstitution benefits from that, be it in a healthcare environment,gallery, museum or school. Poignantly the artists described arts andhealth practice as a way of clearing a space around a patient.

The writer would like to thanks the following Vital Signs artists for their timeand openness to dialogue: Paul Gregg, Helene Hugel, Jennie Moran, DenisRoche and John Tunney.

Annette Moloney is a curator whose practice includes writing, artist mentor-ing and public art commissions.

Artist: John Tunney, Sing Another Story, 2009, ShelteredHousing and Daycare Centre, Kilmaley, County Clare

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