Papers by sheelagh broderick
This research project concerns arts practices in healthcare settings and the encounter between ar... more This research project concerns arts practices in healthcare settings and the encounter between artist, researcher, healthcare professional and institution. Rather than understanding arts practices as either therapeutic or recreational services, this research asks instead, what (else) can an arts practice do? This is accomplished by connecting two previously separate bodies of scholarship; health sociology and an art criticism of expanded arts practices. By connecting these bodies of scholarship, this inquiry offers a new conceptual language and orientation for arts and health practitioners distinct from the evidence-based practice model most prevalent in academic and professional discourses and consequently establishes a transdisciplinary trajectory for artistic and research practices.
Arts & Health, Jan 1, 2011
This article suggests that the discourse on arts and health encompass contemporary arts practices... more This article suggests that the discourse on arts and health encompass contemporary arts practices as an active and engaged analytical activity. Distinctions between arts therapy and arts practice are made to suggest that clinical evidence-based evaluation, while appropriate for arts therapy, is not appropriate for arts practice and in effect cast them in unreasonable doubt. Themes in current discourse on "arts" and "health" are broadly sketched to provide a context for discussion of arts practices. Approaches to knowledge validation in relation to each domain are discussed. These discourses are applied to the Irish healthcare context, offering a reading of three different art projects; it suggests a multiplicity of analyses beyond causal positive health gains. It is suggested that the social turn in medicine and the social turn in arts practices share some similar pre-occupations that warrant further attention.
Democracy and Nature, Jan 1, 1999
inter-disciplinary.net
Arts and health is a new interdisciplinary field of inquiry that is defining its boundaries, dist... more Arts and health is a new interdisciplinary field of inquiry that is defining its boundaries, distinguishing itself from art therapy and struggling to find appropriate methods of validation. Epistemological bias in healthcare has resulted in some arts projects being validated using the gold standard of a randomized control trial. However there is an expanding literature that considers that arts practices represent an alternate body of knowledge that can add to our understandings of health, illness, disease and indeed healthcare systems themselves. This presentation is based on my research Interpreting Arts & Health. It will demonstrate exemplars of contemporary arts practices in relation to experiences of health and chronic illness. Liminality (McMahon 2011) and Transplant (Wainwright & Wynne 2008) adopt different approaches to the issue of transplant. The former considers how the transplant reconfigures the subjectivity of patients, while the latter is more concerned with a phenomenological account of being in hospital waiting for a donor. Cradle to Grave (Pharmacopia, 2003) is an installation that considers how Western society responds to sickness and ill health. It consists of a lifetime supply of prescription drugs based on the fictional biographical life course of an average man and woman. Using these examples, I suggest that arts practices can operate in descriptive, critical and analytical modes in its address of health and illness, which are relevant for healthcare professionals and patients alike.
Paper to Sociological Association of Ireland conference …, Jan 1, 1998
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Papers by sheelagh broderick