Last week, a half day seminar was held at Mater Dei Hospital with the aim to incentivise various stakeholders on a national level to explore ways and means of developing and increasing volunteering in healthcare, particularly through an artistic and creative approach in order to enhance patient recovery and community wellbeing.
This seminar, which took the form of a Roundtable discussion, was part of the Raising Spirits Project, a flagship project approved under the Call for proposals in the framework of the European Year of Volunteering 2011. Project partners include SOS Malta, Mater Dei Hospital, VOICES Foundation, Malta Council for Culture and the Arts (MCCA) and the Malta Cancer Foundation.
Raising Spirits aims at promoting an enabling and facilitating environment for creative and artistic volunteering within healthcare, aimed at improved patient recovery and community wellbeing.
Stakeholders were introduced to the idea of creative and artistic volunteering in hospitals and the benefits it can bring along. The event was characterised by an exchange and sharing of good practices brought in from other EU Member States (particularly the UK). These were also based on presentations given on some of the key findings and practices described within a Compendium of Good Practices compiled by project partners prior to this seminar.
Guest speakers included Ms Diana Greenman, Chief Executive of Music in Hospitals, U.K and Ms Jayne Howard, Director, Arts for Health, Cornwall.
The roundtable facilitated an initial exchange of ideas between the different stakeholders on how organised and regular creative and artistic volunteering activities in healthcare can be introduced based on the experiences and good practices relayed.
Participants included officials from the Health and Arts sectors alike as well as representatives from Health NGOs, artists and representatives from private hospitals.
Following this Roundtable, a group of eight volunteers from various backgrounds inlcuding drama, social work, music and engineering, received 18 hours of interactive training focused on organising arts in health initiatives. This group have formed a committee and will concentrate on raising awareness to the benefits of arts events in hospitals and other care settings and pave the way for the sustainability of such actions.
Two performances will be organised at Mater Dei Hospital by this committee before the end of the year and a 3 year action plan for the introduction of regular arts in health initiatives will be drafted at the start of the New Year.