Arts and health has been a key priority area of Arts OutWest over the last two decades.
In our strategic plan we aim to:
- Extend the work in hospitals (includes MPS and MPU facilities) through a range of artforms and across many aspects of health (including dementia and disability)
- Advise and support health sector workers to develop their programs and support strategic development
- Build links with other service providers in the health sector
- Support arts practitioners to be trained and aware of best practice approaches to working in health settings
- Continue to take a leadership role in the sector (Eg. participation in the NSW/ACT Leadership Group).
Arts OutWest has a memorandum of understanding and a long term partnership with Western NSW Local Health District (WNSWLDH).
Individual project partners are listed with each project overview and case study (below).
AWARD WINNING PROJECTS
In both 2011 and 2012 Arts OutWest won the Arts and Health Australia International Award for ‘Arts and Health in Regional and Rural Australia’. Christine McMillan accepted the 2012 award at the Arts and Health Conference in Freemantle, WA, where she had also been invited to present on the Look Art Talk project. In 2013 Bathurst Regional Art Gallery won a Museums & Galleries NSW IMAGiNE Award for the partnership project with Arts OutWest, Look Art Talk. In 2016 Arts OutWest and Lachlan Health Service’s Mali Marambir Ngurang: to make better place Lachlan Aboriginal language signage project won the Chief Executive’s Award at the Western NSW Local Health District’s annual Living Well Together Health and Innovation Awards.
Current Activities
Researching arts in aged care
Ongoing: arts programming in hospitals
arts experiences in aged care
arts project to create healing environments
Latest news
Along with the seasons changing we have some staff changes at Arts OutWest: Christine McMillan, who has been the Arts & Health Coordinator for 15 years is retiring this month.
September 2023 Arts Outwest’s art & health officer Steven Cavanagh attended the Western Health Research Network symposium in Dubbo
In September Steven Cavanagh our arts & health officer switched up the exhibitions at two of the region’s hospitals, bringing a fresh feel to each with local art.
A collaborative arts project to create healing environments working with the Infant Child Youth Family Mental Health Unit (ICYFMHU) is underway at Bloomfield campus (Orange) in the redeveloped Yaganda Bulabul Building.
Christine and Steven have begun work on the THREE RIVERS mural project we have been commissioned to undertake throughout the child and adolescent mental health unit at Bloomfield Hospital Orange.
past project case studies
A selection of arts and health projects and activities from recent years. Many of these projects have ongoing threads that connect to our current work.
Songwriting for good mental health
Hospitals adopt Aboriginal language signage
Creating the ‘Siloscopes’ outdoor sculpture for Forbes Hospital
Supported 2019: Multi-arts mental health stories
2017: colouring in book for patients, visitors and staff
2018: For People Living with Dementia and their Carers
2016: Pilot program training musicians to work in hospitals
2012: Pilot Art and Alzheimer’s program
Aged care art and dementia program
2012-14: Aboriginal health
2013: multi-arts program of music, dance, visual arts, storytelling.
2017: Multi-arts approach to good mental health
Ongoing: arts programming in hospitals
2015-2017: embedding arts into new hospitals
2021: workshops, hospital exhibition
2021: Art making for health space
Supported 21-22: multi-arts response to bushfire recovery
2022: Lake Cargelligo MPS mural
