Music and Health: Exchanges and Comparisons between Artistic Practices

The cooperation project between Arts for Health (United Kingdom), Waterford Healing Arts Trust (Ireland) and Musique & Santé (France) took place from October 2005 to August 2006 around three actions:

Artistic Residencies

Six artistic residencies in healthcare settings involved Irish, British, and French professional musicians in each one of the three countries.

These residencies facilitated the mobility of European artists and favoured inter-professional exchanges; they fostered the reflection on music as an accompanying tool for hospitalised persons.

The content of these residencies was built according to each country’s specificities so that each guest musician could discover the methods and approaches characteristic to each hospital.

European Seminar

An exchange seminar was organised for cultural and healthcare professionals from several European countries (France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Bulgaria).

This seminar offered the opportunity for know-how exchanges, testimonies from practitioners, sharing and presentations of reflections following the six artistic residencies. It resulted in the creation of an informal European network “culture in hospitals”, centred on exchanges and confrontations on artistic practices in healthcare settings.

Documentary Film

A film, testimony of the artistic practices which promote the humanisation of hospitals, was realised during this project.

This documentary film is a presentation tool of musical practices in healthcare settings aimed at musicians, trainers, cultural and health institutions as well as the general public. The filmmaker filmed interventions of musicians in hospitals. Patients, health care staff, as well as artists speak in this film.

Who benefited from the project:

Hospital patients and their families. Thanks to musical interventions, by approaching the
cultural world, patients and their families, whatever their age or origin, feel closer to society and to the outside world. They are sensitised to artistic practices.
The professional musicians of the different partner countries. This project allowed the artists:

• to realise actions of proximity and creativity with hospitalised patients,
• to enrich their reflection on their own actions in hospitals, at an artistic, medical and technical level,
• to imagine new forms and approaches of musical interventions;
• to meet best healthcare staff’s and patients’ expectations;
• to enlarge their musical repertoire

Healthcare staff (doctors, nurses, nursing auxiliaries and administrative staff), who understand and integrate music as a means to develop and to humanise hospitals.

Workers of cultural institutions (music school directors, music teachers, offices administering culture, etc.) as cultural mediators were sensitised to actions set up for this audience marginalised by their hospitalisation.
Guests of the closing seminar participated in a common reflection as futures stakeholders of our European network.

This project received the financial support of the European Commission – Programme Culture 2000, of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, of the Regional Council of Île-de-France, of the Arts Council of England.
It was also supported by: Radio France, Royal Northern College of Music, Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Manchester Camerata,…

Patrons committee:
Kurt Masur, Musical Director of the Orchestre National de France
Pr. Marcel Rufo, Paedo-psychiatrist
Howard Buten, Psychologist, Clown
Mary Harney, Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children of Ireland
John O’Donoghue, Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism of Ireland
Olive Braiden, Chairperson of the Irish Arts Council