Seed Grant Recipients 2026 Announced
In collaboration with Irish Hospice Foundation’s Caru Programme, our Arts and Cultural Engagement Team are delighted to announce funding has been awarded for six Seed Grant projects to support creative approaches to encouraging conversation in residential care about Advance Care Planning. The awardees represent a range of residential care settings, clinicians, and artists nationwide and reflect a varied range of creative practice from storytelling and music, to memory sharing and visual arts. Selection was made to align with Caru’s ambition as a quality improvement programme.
In April this year, following a call-out for applications, we received 45 submissions for a place on our Seed Grants programme designed to encourage creative exploration through micro-financing, bespoke mentorship, resources, and expertise. This represents a 28% increase in applications from our 2024 Arts in Residential Care Seed Grants suggesting increased levels of interest and need.
Healthcare Director Siobhán Murphy says:
“Our ambition with this current round of Seed Grant projects is to further develop our understanding of what creativity offers people in a residential care setting. In parallel, how to support staff and artists facilitate conversations about advance care planning, what best practice is, and how to work in care systems all in support of ‘a good death’.”
Arts and Cultural Engagement Lead Dominic Campbell says:
“We know from surveys and reports including National End of Life, Time to Reflect, Dying Well at Home, Dying, Death, and Bereavement in Ireland 2026, and Telling It Like It Is; Combatting Ageism, appropriate conversation about end-of-life planning can reduce stress at challenging times by creating an opportunity for people to talk about their wishes and expectations. Often people lack confidence to do so. Creative approaches, the use of the arts or cultural tools, can help.”
Alongside the Seed Grant, Irish Hospice Foundation’s Caru, Arts and Cultural Engagement, Bereavement Education, and Advance Care Planning / Think Ahead Teams will:
- Deliver training in:
- Advance Care and Think Ahead Planning
- Opening and facilitating sensitive conversations
- Reflective practice for evaluating projects
- Provide ongoing bespoke mentoring to the creative and host residential care setting, including responding to queries.
- Devise an evaluation framework to assess benefits and outcomes.
- Create an appropriate communication strategy to tell the story of this work.
In addition, the awardees will join a nationwide Peer Network for capacity building, which in turn will connect these projects with quality improvement, staff engagement and care competencies. Awardees will also be seeking to sustain and / or extend their project after the funding period ends in October 2026.
Seed Grant Recipients 2026
- Friars Lodge Nursing Home (Mayo): ‘What Matters to Me’ with Gerry Gallen, Manager / Owner, and Noreen Lydon, Visual Artist
- Killarney Nursing Home (Kerry): ‘Meeting My Mortality’ with Steve Loveland, Head of Clann Clúid’s Age Friendly Housing Team, and Rachel Lartey, Social Practice Artist
- Lisheen Nursing Home (Dublin – North): ‘What I’d Bring With Me’ with Agnes Ang, Clinical Nurse Manager III, and Claudia Ferreira, Staff Nurse
- Ofalia House / Edenderry Community Nursing Unit (Offaly): ‘My Story, My Choices’ with Aisling Mooney, Clinical Nurse Manager, and Alice Connolly, Activity Co-ordinator
- St Columba’s Hospital (Kilkenny): ‘Wishing Seeds’ with Enda Walsh, Principal Social Worker, Adult Safeguarding, HSE South East, Edelle Ni Nuallain (Nolan), Arts and Health Project Manager, and Caroline Schofield, Visual Artist
- St Joseph’s Community Nursing Unit (Meath): ‘This is Me’ with Ann Marie Quinn, Senior Staff Nurse, and Marieanne Mc Neill Healthcare Assistant / Solace Team Leader
About Seed Grants
Our Arts and Cultural Engagement Seed Grant programme began in 2021. To date, 61 projects have been supported with micro-grants, expertise, mentoring, and resources. In 2024, we supported six Seed Grant funded initiatives to encourage creative exploration and responses to grief and loss in a residential care setting. Awardees included activity co-ordinators, artists, educators, and academics. Using a wide variety of creative practice, each project facilitated safe conversations about dying, death, grief, and loss. Feedback was unanimously positive, with all involved citing they had a significant impact on staff, residents, and families. A report on this project is available to download here.
Learn more at: www.hospicefoundation.ie/arts
About Caru
Caru is a continuous learning programme developed by Irish Hospice Foundation and the All-Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care (AIIHPC) in collaboration with the HSE. This free quality improvement programme is available to all nursing home staff across Ireland. The aim of Caru is to support and improve the delivery of compassionate, person-centred, palliative, end of life and bereavement care to residents and family members in nursing homes.
Learn more at: www.caru.ie
