Developing a social prescribing service at Art in Healthcare based on an Occupational Therapy model Part 2

Monday 8th February 2016


Today we held the first art workshop for patients referred from Baronscourt Surgery as part of our pilot social prescribing service based on an Occupational Therapy model. I met patients at the Surgery along with the artist, Leo du Feu, before we walked with them over to the venue at Piershill Community Flat (PCF). 6 out of 6 patients who were registered turned up, a 100% improvement on the first time we ran the workshops when, despite apparent interest from patients to get involved, no one actually showed up. We had to go back to the drawing board about what might have represented barriers to access for patients and decided people needed to understand more about what was involved and the 'why'. This is how we came to introduce the Occupational Therapy aspect of the project - an informal Art Assessment in which patients would hear more about the project and have the chance to set goals for themselves, hereby taking a clear responsibility for their own health and well-being progression. Unfortunately, one of the patients didn't follow through and actually attend the workshop at the last minute but, she had at least set out to attend it, which was a massive step in itself. 

Image from the first Baronscourt workshop with participants using pastels

The ten minute walk was surprisingly helpful as an extra part of the process, giving patients and artist the chance to informally meet each other and chat, out of the context of the Surgery and before the context of sitting together in the 'art room'. Inevitably there was an air of anticipation amidst all patients and I could sense distinct social nerves that no one knew each other. However, the walk played a clear part in reducing these nerves and people seemed in a more relaxed frame of mind by the time they arrived than when we'd met at the surgery. Sunshine on the walk helped too!

I left patients at PCF in the capable hands of Leo with whom I had discussed previously the key goals and points to note regarding each patient. This meant that both artist and patient were more prepared than either party ever had been for our workshops and I sense this made a significant difference. Leo reported afterwards that the workshop had gone really well, that there had been a lot of conversation, a lot of creativity and a lot of interest in art in general. 

We are very grateful to our two lovely volunteers from Art in Healthcare, Beth Hadshar and Vessela Ivkova, who supported Leo in the workshop and greeted patients with big smiles when they first arrived at the PCF. With thanks also to Alistair McIntyre for hosting the workshop on behalf of the PCF and for providing essential teas and coffees to patients on their arrival!

Image from the first Baronscourt workshop with participants using pastels

Three workshops remain, followed by a Celebration Event, followed by a 1-1 OT Art Evaluation so there's work to be done in assuring the project is a success and in measuring the outcomes. However, we're confident that the building blocks bringing us this far have moved Art in Healthcare significantly along the journey of service development and we're realising that we're able to contribute a great deal more than we ever envisaged as an arts and health charity through using quite a different approach. We feel we're getting to the bottom of exactly how and why the arts can be so beneficial for health and the role that both primary care and artists can play in this, coming at it from two completely different contexts but with one unifying goal.

Amelia Calvert writes as the Outreach Manager of Art in Healthcare and as an Occupational Therapist.

A full report on the project is available at: http://bit.ly/29PsIlz

Art in Healthcare is an Edinburgh-based charity whose mission is to enhance the health and wellbeing of everyone in Scotland through the visual arts.

Developing a social prescribing service at Art in Healthcare based on an Occupational Therapy model Part 1

PART 1: Wednesday 27th January 2016

Today I sat in a clinic room as an Occupational Therapist at Baronscourt Surgery seeing patients referred from the GP. Essentially I carried out OT Art Assessments with each patient, inviting them to get involved in a series of art workshops that aims to improve their wellbeing through, a) the social experience of a group, b) having the chance to express feelings and emotions through art as a means of non-verbal communication and c) opportunities to improve their self-confidence and learn new skills.

Image from one of Art in Healthcare's previous art workshops for VOCAL carers organisation

I set goals with the patients about what they each might gain from the experience, ranging from, 'To leave each workshop with a smile' to 'Embrace range of creative opportunities as a long-term hobby potential', ie a range of social and creative goals.

This feels a big step along the way for Art in Healthcare in terms of mainstreaming art and the therapeutic qualities it holds through embracing the social prescribing model. It is also a big step for myself as an Occupational Therapist in terms of unifying the value I hold of creativity with my passion for supporting and giving care to others.

Artwork created in one of Art in Healthcare's previous art workshops for VOCAL carers organisation

I'm really looking forward to hearing how the workshops go next month with artist Leo du Feu and to see what artworks the participants create for display at the surgery in the long term. Meanwhile, we are grateful to Baronscourt Surgery and particularly to Dr Thomson for enabling this opportunity.

Amelia Calvert writes as the Outreach Manager of Art in Healthcare and as an Occupational Therapist.

A full report on the project is available at: http://bit.ly/29PsIlz

Art in Healthcare is an Edinburgh-based charity whose mission is to enhance the health and wellbeing of everyone in Scotland through the visual arts.

Artist Uncovered: David Michie OBE, RSA, FRSA

“All the wonderful things that happen through the commonplace” 

Art in Healthcare included no less than three paintings by David Michie in their relatively small but perfectly formed 2014 Festival exhibition ‘The Healing Power of Art’, such is the enduring appeal of the renowned artist.

The Flamenco Dancer  oil on canvas, 38 x 38 cms

image courtesy of Art in Healthcare

When I first interviewed him two years ago Michie talked about his early years spent in a small village on the French Riviera with his artistic parents and two brothers, where the bright colours and ambient zest for life helped shape his love of nature and his outlook on the world and on life. He also showed me the dozens of sketchbooks where he recorded his observations, a lifetime of visual data.
At the end of that first meeting he mentioned the influence that French cinema had on him as a young man but we had ran out of time so it is with keen anticipation that I revisit him to talk further about this and other sources of inspiration.

Two Pigeons oil on canvas, 43 x 58 cms

Art in Healthcare Collection

He recalls how as a young art student in Edinburgh, he was encouraged by his tutors to go to the National Gallery of Scotland and look up the great masters to help him decide what theme would define his practice. Although he admired them, the young Michie struggled to engage personally with the grand social and political topics of the larger than life dramatic compositions by Rubens or Poussin. Instead he was much more drawn towards the recently released films from France and Italy shown at the independent Cameo cinema, a welcome and exciting change from the staple diet of American and British films that dominated all other screens in the late 1940s when television sets were still a rarity.
He immersed himself in the neorealism of films like Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis which he watched at least fifteen times or Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles trilogy and other masterpieces by Roberto Rossellini or Vittorio de Sica. 

Autumn Garden with Honesty oil on canvas, 91.5 x 127 cms

image courtesy of The Scottish Gallery

These cinematographic encounters all contributed to Michie’s realisation that his interest lay, not in grand historical paintings but in the beauty of the everyday observed at first hand, the view from his window, the racing pigeons shown by miners at a local Pigeon Fancying fair, a bunch of flowers in a jug. He sums it up by quoting Paul Sérusier, an influential French painter of the turn of the twentieth century, who said “It is the role of the artist to see the significant in the ordinary.”
Not surprisingly he also felt much more drawn towards the hedonistic interiors of Pierre Bonnard and Raoul Dufy or Henri Matisse’s sensuous odalisks than towards the raw emotions exuding from the works of British artists of the latter half of the twentieth century whose penchant for pathos he sees as a throwback to Puritan times. 

At a Window  oil on canvas, 115.5 x 115.5 cms

Art in Healthcare Collection

This preference for informal and organic compositions was further confirmed to him one significant summer day while walking around his friends John Houston’s and Elizabeth Blackadder’s garden when he was bowled over by nature’s riotous colours and proliferation that pushed back the man-made backdrop of geometric trellisses. This revelatory moment was all the more compelling because he had been engaged for some time in painting severe compositions. It was to influence his whole practice and inspire many plant portraits not out of interest in botany but as a lover of nature, in his own words, “rhyming shapes, rhyming colour”. 

This idea of capturing the moment brings us to the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Michie explains that the impromptu appearance of his photographs was in fact the result of hours spent at a particular spot waiting for that brief second, “anticipating that something was going to happen, much like a tiger ready to pounce” he adds. Cartier-Bresson was also a purist who would present a final image, probably one of many rejects, unadulterated and framed exactly as it had been shot.
Paradoxically there rests the connection between the two artists as Cartier-Bresson’s long drawn out creative process is in fact the reverse of Michie’s own painstaking method of painting that he describes as “a sum of corrections” based as it is on many marks, scraped and painted over time and time again until he has achieved the air of fortuitous and effortless spontaneity that typifies his style.

In the Fitness Pool with Noodles  oil on canvas, 40.5 x 35.5 cms

image courtesy of Art in Healthcare

Another favourite filmmaker of his of that period is Jacques Tati. He particularly remembers Jour de Fête, the hilarious slapstick account of a postman’s tribulations set in a small French village. Its humour is due to Tati’s perfect timing and miming genius in the main role. Michie was particularly captivated by the beautifully observed tiny incidents that all add up to turn this very simple narrative into a work of art. His own power of observation and sense of humour come through in many of his paintings, such as the deliciously witty In the Fitness Pool with Noodles where he pokes gentle fun at aqua aerobics enthusiasts.

Michie’s paintings are always born as a response to what he sees around him and from observations captured in a few seconds in his sketchbooks. His latest project is the publication of a selection of these sketches. This book promises to be as entertaining as it will be revealing of his many sources of inspiration.

With thanks to David Michie

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh


References

Art in Healthcare Festival Exhibition 2014 http://aihexhibition.blogspot.co.uk/ 
Art in Healthcare blog David Michie, November 2012 http://artinhealthcare-scotland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/artist-uncovered-david-michie-obe-rsa.html 

The Scottish Gallery http://www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/artist/david_michie

And special thanks to Balfour Beatty Investments and Arts & Business Scotland for their financial support, which has enabled Art in Healthcare to produce 18 Artist Uncovered blog posts and accompanying video productions.

Art in Healthcare Artwork in Situ

Below are some examples of our extensive, high quality and original artwork on display in various healthcare settings around the country. If you would like to find out more about displaying work from our Collection in your healthcare environment please contact Victoria on collectionmanager@artinhealthcare.org.uk

Installing art at Ninewells Medical School, Dundee

Ninewells Medical School, Dundee

Ninewells Medical School, Dundee

Ninewells Medical School, Dundee

Ninewells Medical School, Dundee

Scanning the art label QR code to access much more information about the artwork

Royal Victoria Edinburgh

Royal Victoria Edinburgh

Scottish Epilepsy Centre, Govan

Scottish Epilepsy Centre, Govan

Scottish Epilepsy Centre, Govan

Scottish Epilepsy Centre, Govan

Scottish Epilepsy Centre, Govan

Scottish Epilepsy Centre, Govan

Scottish Epilepsy Centre, Govan

Site specific artwork, Royal Victoria Building Edinburgh

Site specific artwork, Royal Victoria Building Edinburgh

Our volunteers helping photograph artwork in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital

Artist Uncovered: Gabrielle Reith

It is hard to imagine today but there was once a time when hospital walls were kept resolutely bare for the sake of hygiene as paintings were considered to be dust traps. Happily these days are long gone and it is now widely recognised that images have a powerful and positive impact on the wellbeing of all who frequent healthcare settings, the patients of course and also the visitors and staff.

Study for Tuscan Summer mixed media, 38x38cm
AiH Collection

On a primal level images connect directly with our subconscious and we respond to them with our senses, our feelings and emotions, even more so, research reveals, when they depict nature and the landscape.

Gabrielle Reith’s paintings with their strong colours and forms have the ability to convey a sense of place, real or imagined, and to transport us somewhere else.

Her linear compositions transform terrain and houses into elemental shapes verging on abstraction. The modernist square format she uses here serves to intensify the sense of rhythm and tension within the canvas. The artist focuses our mind on a particular feature or colour thus enhancing our experience of the work.

Study for Assisi  mixed media, 38x38cm
AiH Collection

Reith graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 1998 and the paintings in the Art in Healthcare Collection date from her degree show. She was brought up in Aberdeenshire where she still lives today. Landscapes of great beauty have influenced her all her life and have trained her eyes from an early age to process seasonal changes and their colour variations. She has taken this practice with her on her travels abroad.

In both paintings Study for Assisi and Study for a Tuscan Summer the heat of Italy is palpable in the ochre tainted stones and purple shadows. The architectural details are abbreviated to curves and arches like shorthand signs to evoke the romanesque style typical of that region.

Study for Montenagiche mixed media, 38x38cm
AiH Collection

In sharp contrast, the two other paintings in the Art in Healthcare Collection with their blue and green tones immerse the viewer in the coolness of the Tuscan night. When the sun has ceased to beat down hard and recedes, giving way to dusk and darkness, ambiguous shapes begin to emerge, assuming mass and volume and an air of mystery.

Study for 10 Summer Minutes  mixed media, 38x38cm
AiH Collection

Reith reinvents the landscape. She flattens it and then reintroduces depth with patterns and texture. By breaking it down into distinctive shapes, motifs and dark outlines that delineate the blocks of colours, the artist creates a universal language of signs and symbols.

Through this process, the landscape loses its specificity, it escapes the confines of geographical coordinates and enters the realm of the imagination. It becomes all our landscapes.

Since the late 1990s, Gabrielle Reith has developed a successful practice as designer and maker of a varied range of products inspired by the natural world and her young family. With their strong lines and colours, her recent textiles, carved jewellery and paper designs represent the natural expansion of her painterly talent.

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh.

Gabrielle Reith's website http://www.g-r-a.co.uk/

And special thanks to Balfour Beatty Investments and Arts & Business Scotland for their financial support, which has enabled Art in Healthcare to produce 18 Artist Uncovered blog posts and accompanying video productions.

Artist Uncovered: Elspeth Lamb RSA

The eight prints by Elspeth Lamb in the AiH Collection span three decades and altogether encapsulate the internationally renowned printmaker’s diverse repertoire of silkscreen, collage, lithograph, screenprinting and papermaking.
The titles March Hare, Miracle Fish and Milagro give us an inkling of Lamb’s predilection for fairy tales and enchantment and this is indeed confirmed unmistakably by the allusion to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the cover image of her website and by the artist’s long blond hair that echoes the famous golden locks. Motifs from Lewis Carroll’s classic novel recur in Lamb’s iconography, not only the hare but also the ubiquitous ellipse, sometime egg, sometime mirror. 

Spinner screenprint, 103x113.8cm

AiH Collection

These references to Alice seem most appropriate when you consider that it is the privilege of artists to cross over two worlds, the mundane and the extraordinary and to take the viewers through the looking glass into the land of dreams. And as in Alice’s story, there is a certain frisson of danger in Lamb’s make-believe art with appellations like ‘chimera’, ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ and ‘cantrip’, the Scots word for magical spell.
Printmaking is steeped in rituals and processes. But for printmakers, the exacting nature of their methods is not limiting but opens up an ever-increasing array of possibilities the more skilled they become.

Milagro lithograph, 125x92cm

AiH Collection

Elspeth Lamb is an expert in her art form which she taught for over twenty years at Edinburgh College of Art, latterly as Head of the Printmaking department. Then in 1999 she left college to embrace a freelance career, a momentous decision that allowed her to divide her time from then on between her own practice and teaching through workshops.
Travels had always been important to her work and she was now able to spend even more time abroad at the invitation of art institutions. Japan held a particular fascination for her and in 2000 she got the opportunity to immerse herself in its culture when she was selected for an international residency programme. She spent ten weeks in the village of Nagasawa and turned the tables on herself by becoming the pupil of master craftsmen to study moku hanga, a water-based method of woodblock printing that produces stunningly vivid and transparent colours. 

March Hare screenprint, 71x41cm

AiH Collection

She returned to Japan two years later to learn traditional papermaking as part of her research for a book she had been commissioned to write which was subsequently published in 2006 under the title Papermaking for Printmakers.  Lamb called upon a number of experts to work with her on this very detailed handbook and in her introduction she explains eloquently the seduction and rationale of papermaking that she describes as “a tactile revolt against the limitations of the flat, one-dimensional print”. 
Physically challenging and time consuming, it is also enormously rewarding because the artists can add to the pulp specially chosen elements that evoke places and emotions through touch and smell as well as visually. The end result is two artworks in one, the paper and the print which complement each other perfectly, layers upon layers.

Miracle Fish screenprint, 70x40cm

AiH Collection

Inspired by her two visits to Japan, Lamb produced in 2006 an artist’s book Nagasawa Cantrips. In this limited edition of ten, the artist has conjured up the best of her skills to bring together traditional and modern printing methods, Western and Eastern thinking and her favourite themes. March Hare and Miracle Fish are two of a few prints that were produced separately and that can be enjoyed today by the patients, staff and visitors of the healthcare setting they enhance.

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh

For further information:
http://www.lambbo.macmate.me/Site/Elspeth%20Lamb.html 
http://vimeo.com/15252990 
http://www.endeavor.or.jp/nap/index.html 
Papermaking for Printmakers by Elspeth Lamb, pub. A&C Black, London



And special thanks to Balfour Beatty Investments and Arts & Business Scotland for their financial support, which has enabled Art in Healthcare to produce 18 Artist Uncovered blog posts and accompanying video productions.

Artist Uncovered: Duncan Pettigrew 1973-1993

"Love your art"

In many ways Duncan Pettigrew was a typical adolescent full of youthful enthusiasm and confidence. Art was his passion and although his most productive period only spanned a couple of years, he left behind enough works to fill up several gallery spaces. 

Self-portrait (with hat) oil, 100x76cm 

(aged 16 when at Edinburgh Academy)

image courtesy of J and M Pettigrew

His numerous self-portraits show a young man looking straight at the viewer, not with arrogance but with the assurance that befitted the accomplished draughtsman that he was. The word ‘extraordinary’ comes to mind when describing the extent and range of his talent. John Brown who taught him in fifth and sixth year at Edinburgh Academy in Edinburgh and himself a renowned artist was impressed by his technical ability at such a young age.
The wealth of details in his works reveal to us his sharp observation skills and his delight in putting together carefully conceived and balanced compositions livened up with boldly contrasting light and dark tones for dramatic effect.

Self-portrait (with trophy)  oil, 110x76cm

(aged 17 when at Edinburgh Academy, 

inspired by the award of the Burness Trophy for Painting)

image courtesy of J and M Pettigrew

Duncan may have inherited his aptitude from his artistic parents but his competence was entirely his own and earned through fervent practice. He was constantly drawing and his sketchbooks show how he learnt about the way things connect and relate to one another:  the front door to their house, the large cheese plant sprawling up the banister, the florid wallpaper in a holiday home abroad. 
This fusion of eagerness and talent gave rise to the prodigious pace that defined his working process. His father recalls that in the time it took him to do half a drawing, Duncan would do four or five.

Sack Series No 1 pastel, 53x41cm
(still life in LSA studio)

AiH Collection

He had been accepted by Glasgow School of Art when he was diagnosed with leukaemia. After his first stay in hospital, he surprised everyone by producing seven large self-portraits within a week, each one named after the day it was completed. This series of charcoal drawings shows his keen sense of humour as in Sunday where he drew himself wrapped up in toilet paper, the one thing that was close at hand and in abundant supply. His art became his way of thumbing his nose at his illness.
While in hospital he received a visit from John Bellany who was a friend of his mother from art college. Bellany gave him a large compendium of Picasso’s works with the hand-written dedication “Love your Art”. 
Duncan spent the following year at Leith School of Art (LSA). In this nurturing environment and with renewed strength, he was able to enjoy this most creative time to the full and never wasted one moment. Typically the four studies in the Sack Series currently with Art in Healthcare were executed as a single studio assignment. 

Sack Series no 3 pencil, 53x41cm
(still life in LSA studio)

AiH Collection

LSA principal Philip Archer who taught him, remembers clearly not only his talent but also his strength of character and clarity of thinking beyond his years and of course his sense of humour. He recalls that Duncan worked hard and wanted to be pushed hard but at the same time that he did not take himself too seriously and held on to his achievements lightly. 
In 1994 Philip Archer and the Pettigrew family put together a show to celebrate Duncan’s artworks that filled the walls of LSA. A book entitled Love your Art accompanied the exhibition and helped raise money for the Leukaemia and Bone Marrow Transplant Fund at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. 

Self-portrait (Sunday) charcoal, 130x75cm

image courtesy of J and M Pettigrew

Duncan’s talent and fortitude inspired all those who came across him and this extract from a poem by Dylan Thomas that Philip Archer appended to his foreword to Love your art is a particularly fitting tribute to this remarkable artist:

                                         “Do not go gentle into that goodnight,

                                          Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh

With thanks to Jennifer and Maurice Pettigrew and to Philip Archer.
With thanks to Soosan Danesh for photographing the self-portraits above.

Love your art is available for borrowing from Edinburgh libraries.

Related link
Leith School of Art http://www.leithschoolofart.co.uk/

And special thanks to Balfour Beatty Investments and Arts & Business Scotland for their financial support, which has enabled Art in Healthcare to produce 18 Artist Uncovered blog posts and accompanying video productions.