Our Group
Aims
Our overall aim is to enhance the healthcare environment at ABM for all stakeholders by using creative arts. This includes patients, their visitors, families and staff.
This involves exhibitions, commissions, workshops, demonstrations in a wide variety of media including visual, photographic, musical sessioned and dance, and builds upon the existing portfolio of contributions, such as art and photographic displays, sculptures, murals and mosaics.
We are trying to:
This involves exhibitions, commissions, workshops, demonstrations in a wide variety of media including visual, photographic, musical sessioned and dance, and builds upon the existing portfolio of contributions, such as art and photographic displays, sculptures, murals and mosaics.
We are trying to:- Integrate Art into the environment through a co-ordinated approach.
- Support art based projects for both staff and patients.
- Increase patient access to art therapy.
- Provide an encouraging culture for those arts based interests to get involved.
- Identify arts based developments to benefit patients and staff.
- Allocate minor financial support for specific proposals.
- Provide a platform for networking.
- Work towards an overall strategy for Arts in Health across the Health Board.
- Ensure arts are part of all capital schemes.
Outcomes for the group are to achieve benefits to patients; benefits to staff; increased creativity and innovation in care, education and services; and integration of Arts in Healthcare. Formal feedback and evaluations accompany each individual project.
Why do we do it?
The arts has a role in the healing environment; in therapy and in improving working lives but what are the benefits?
Arts have been shown to have an effect on clinical outcomes:
Arts have been shown to have an effect on clinical outcomes:
- Relaxing music has been shown to have a beneficial effect on anxiety,heart rate,blood pressure,immune response and pain perception (Knight 2001).
- Rheumatoid arthritis sufferers who listened to 20minutes of their preferred music daily reported a significant reduction in their perception of pain (Schorr 1993).
The use of arts in Mental Health:
- Increases the communication skills of mental health users,improving their relationship with family and mental health providers.(Killick 1999, Allen 2000).
- Singing has been shown to increase the quality of life of people with dementia (Kincaid 2003).
Promoting better relationships between health practitioners and patients:
- Literature is important in helping health practitioners to develop empathy across gender,race, class or culture (Charon 1995, Hunter 1995).
- Arts can stimulate insights into shared human experiences and individual differences (McMellan 1996).
Arts can improve staff morale and job satisfaction:
- Works of art in the work environment has a positive effect on staff satisfaction (Ulrich 1992).
- Introducing music into waiting rooms can reduce stress in patients visitors and staff.(Routhieaux1997).
Creative arts enable creativity of ideas, solutions and direction:
- Arts can contribute to staff being creative at work and to all management and educational processes. Using arts can speed up the development of ideas.