Engaging with science in arts and health practice

Meroë Candy, Senior Arts AdvisorWellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome

The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable

foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary

improvements in health by supporting the brightest minds.

Wellcome Trust Arts Awards

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”James Baldwin

Benefits for patients

Knowledge and understanding

Confidence and empowerment

Making the link between research and practice

Enabling their voice to be heard

Benefits for professionalsInsight“Artists and psychologists think about the same concerns: people, perception, meaning, language, concepts, experience and culture and what that tells us about people. Working with artists has fundamentally changed my thinking about these things.”

“The arts provides a different perspective on things. It’s easy to become cocooned in your comfort zone. [The collaboration] did make me think about the subjectivity of people's experiences.”

5

Benefits for professionals

Methods

“I’m interested in interdisciplinary collaboration for the generation of new knowledge. This was seen as eccentric at first but now it’s considered to be innovative methodology”

Benefits for professionals

Communication and teaching“In my clinical practice, I use the narratives that come out of these collaborations when talking to patients and their families. They enable you to think about different ways of understanding the world and identifying shared experiences.”

Challenges

Time/resources

Institutional buy-in

Clarity of roles – managing expectations

Ownership of data and intellectual property

Letting go

For more information on the Wellcome Trust Arts Awards: www.wellcome.ac.uk/artsarts@wellcome.ac.ukm.candy@wellcome.ac.uk