Our annual international symposium returns for its seventh year on Friday 20th November 2026.

Organised by St Columba's Hospice Care in collaboration with Queen Margaret University.

This international symposium has become an annual landmark event for the arts in palliative care. It brings together arts therapists, socially engaged arts practitioners, community artists, arts and health professionals as well as researchers, policy makers and community partners with a commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration.

This year’s symposium focuses on “Encountering the arts in life, death and grief”. Embracing the diversity that characterises the arts in palliative care (see Tsiris & Lee, 2025), we seek to promote dialogue and exchange across different professional, social and cultural contexts. Through presentations, creative workshops, panel discussions and project examples, we will explore how our creative encounters with the arts can shape our experiences of death, loss and change.

The arts —including music, drama, painting, sculpture, creative writing and film making—can offer a creative space for making sense of our living, dying and grieving.  The arts act as a catalyst and container for expressing and processing intense emotions. They also offer powerful means not only for creating legacies but also for generating safe spaces for open conversations about death and dying in society.

To register, please click on this link. Both online and in-person tickets are available. In-person tickets are limited to 40 and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Early bird registration closes on 25th September 2026. Registration for in person participants closes on 6th November 2026 and for online participants on 18th November 2026. 

In-person tickets

Online tickets

For any questions, please email us at: arts@stcolumbashospice.org.uk

Register