Irish Hospice Foundation’s Arts and Cultural Engagement Programme hosted an “Arts, Grief and Loss Skills and Information Exchange” workshop in Letterkenny, Co Donegal. The aim was to explore how creative artists, compassionate communities, and skilled professional therapists can work together to support people in grief and loss using creative practices.
While small in number, Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF) have long recognised there are practitioners working in this space across Ireland representing a range of both clinical and creative backgrounds. We have also long recognised there is a need for complementary or discreet skills. However, there appears to be limited understanding of each other’s disciplines. This is often thought of not as abundance, but as competition. This led to our designing and facilitating an “Arts, Grief and Loss Skills and Information Exchange” workshop prompted by four questions:
- How do we best support people receiving traumatic news or who are bereaved?
- What are the roles for arts and creativity?
- How might this be offered at individual, community, and systemic level?
- What approaches and skills, attributes or qualifications enable work in what type of health making area? For example: Community, Acute Service, Residential Care, Public Health, Mental Health, Wellbeing etc.
Over two days Crafters, Psychologists, Artists, Cultural Practitioners, Art Therapists (IACAT), Psychiatrists, Expressive Therapists, HSE and Private Service Healthcare Workers, Link Workers, and individuals with a particular interest or expertise explored approaches. Supporting this groundbreaking initiative were Cancer Care West, Artlink, Letterkenny Regional Cultural Centre. It was made possible by HSE National Lottery Funding.
The aims of this workshop were to shareity. Sessions were informal, discursive, and covered:
- Introduction to Public Health Bereavement Care Pyramid
- Theories of Grief and creative engagement
- Approaches and responses to those in need from separate disciplines
- Health and care systems in Ireland
- National and local provision and services
- Formal and informal provision
By the end of the workshop, participants reported they had acquired a significantly increased awareness of:
- Discreet disciplines and their strengths
- Where overlapping and complementary areas exist
- How each might benefit individual patients and / or groups
Why use creativity and the arts to explore loss?
The arts help people process sensation into meaning. The process of making something allows people to think and feel differently. Crafting settles the mind. Creativity opens the spirit. Creative work, for instance listening to music, is independently verified as promoting pain, stress and anxiety reduction. We know from our pilot programme, linking experienced artist-facilitators with a wider public in properly resourced sessions initiated meaningful conversations on death, dying, and bereavement, while signposting other health related services available locally for those in greater need.
There are multiple positive health benefits for patients, staff, families and kinship groups. Public health modelling illustrates how unaddressed loss and grief increases the impact of non-communicable diseases and chronic conditions, along with exacerbating poor mental health. It contributes to negative cycles of health.
Why connect Health Care Professionals, Artists, Craftsworkers and Creatives?
People can help themselves with creativity. Various professionals help people in other ways. Better understanding should make it possible for everyone to better support those in need.
Skills and Information Exchange Workshops are also opportunity for feedback and reflection. Creative work supports conversations that may not have other outlets. This, and related sessions, have touched on: cultural diversity in residential care, international recruitment of care staff and the application processes for Irish Citizenship, Professional Grief and available supports, Compassionate Community, younger people with a disability living in Residential Care, availability of services in rural areas, and many other issues.
Related Events
We have since developed a more in-depth “Arts and Culture – Bereavement and Grief” modular training programme (in-person and online). Running over three months, this course explores the many roles of arts and culture in contemporary dying, grief and bereavement. It’s aimed at professionals in the arts and health sector who work with, or are interested in working with, people who have experienced loss. A protype version was successfully trialled in May 2024 generously supported by Creative Ireland.
Learning from this course informed our approach to collaboration with five Local Authorities (Cork City, Roscommon and Mayo, Cavan and Mid-Ulster). Details will become public from late 2025.
Future Activity
IHF are interested in co-developing and facilitating more and related sessions. Nurturing understanding and collaboration across existing disciplines and departments as healthcare needs reflect changing demographics would seem key.
Want to know more?
Register to join the Irish Hospice Foundation’s mailing list at the bottom of this page, or email the arts team: [email protected]
