Adult Arts Programs

The use of arts within a healthcare setting can assist in healing the spirit and mind of the ill patient as is evidenced in clinical research studies internationally. Susan Sontag refers to illness as the ‘night side of life’ intimating at the darkness of illness that surrounds the patient. There is evidence that a patient, when hospitalized for a period of time can become their illness, becoming institutionalized, and find it a struggle to recall their world outside the ordered austere ward. Recent medical research, however offers some light to this darkness. Clinical research, carried out at several hospitals internationally, provides evidence that there are benefits to integrating the arts within a medical environment.  

For instance in a renal dialysis clinic, patients undergoing treatment suffer from boredom and often focus on the physically invasive process of dialysis. Either sitting or lying for a period of two to four hours, two to three times a week, can exacerbate these feelings of illness.

Distraction from the tedium of the treatment and interaction with an artist increases the patients sense of well being and engages them in an art process that culminates in works of art that become a part of the cultural heritage of the community. Their treatment time is transformed into an art class.