POST bringing patients beyond hospital walls

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

“Going into hospital, you can be stripped of so many things and it’s important to see the whole person. Healthcare is recognising that,” says the Arts Director of Saolta Arts Margaret Flannery.

Margaret is in charge of the arts programme at the Saolta University Healthcare Group, which runs hospitals in Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo and Donegal.

She’s been promoting the importance of arts in healthcare since 2003, when the Master’s Graduate in Arts Practice and Policy was appointed Outreach Officer with Galway Arts Centre. A large part of her job there involved liaising with UHG and Merlin Park Hospital.

“I was known as the arts lady,” she recalls with a laugh.

Margaret’s belief in the value of arts in a hospital environment and her tireless work to demonstrate that, resulted in growing HSE support and she’s now employed by the Saolta group, in charge of its arts programme.

Over the years, she’s organised artist-in-residency schemes in Saolta hospitals, she has worked with Cúirt Literature Festival, with the Tulca Festival of Visual Arts and with the Arts Festival, as well as holding exhibitions and events throughout the region – at UHG, Merlin Park and Portiuncula here in Galway.

Saolta Arts also teamed up with Galway 2020, European Capital of Culture to present a year-long arts and health programme, designed to bring nature and familiar landscapes into hospital spaces.

This began in February, before lockdown, with Viriditas, a commission created by singer and artist Ceara Conway, which explored the healing power of music and the link between nature and health.

Another Saolta commission for 2020, POST, was launched in November.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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