Proposing the concrete experience of beauty in hospitals means not to focus on the exteriority of things, but to concentrate on the energy that this experience generates in people and in relationships surrounding them.
Spreading the artistic experience in care settings helps to promote well-being for all the actors involved: a new form of education in sensitivity, creativity, self-awareness and self-acceptance emerges thanks to this experience. Inviting healthcare professionals and patients to express themselves through art means fostering a form of creative thinking and competence, and allows a capacity for renewal, a decentralisation of the gaze, a propensity for curiosity, and an aptitude for searching for the unusual.
The project Art in care settings was born with the aim of spreading, in an itinerant way, artistic expressions in the hospitals of different Italian cities, employing students’ artistic skills or promoting art-therapy practices with people with disabilities within social enterprises.
The initiative started from the DNA working group, constituted by nurses from all over Italy and led by the ISTUD Foundation Healthcare Area, under the patronage of FAIS (Italian Federation of Incontinent and Ostomy Associations) and with the unconditional support of Hollister with the Dansac brand.
Art in care settings was presented in Bologna. The inauguration took place on November 8, at the Department of General Surgery of the Maggiore Hospital, where were exposed the paintings made by the members of the L’Arche Centre, a social enterprise proposing a model of family life among people with different forms of mental disability and people without disabilities. Seven tables constitute the paintings – made with acrylic on canvas under the supervision of the painter Rita Mangano – representing the colours of the rainbow, symbol of the L’Arche Centre, each with a message written by the community members and addressed to patients. To conclude, two paintings made by Mangano on the recommendation of the members: a message of positivity addressed to those who live with a ostomy, accompanied by a vase of flowers animated by the thrust of the butterflies that represent the life blossoming from change.
