The Arts Team at St Columba’s Hospice Care held its 4th annual international symposium for the arts in palliative care on Friday 10th November 2023. The symposium was held in our beautiful event space, No.17 and also, for first time as a hybrid event offering opportunities for online participation via Zoom.
The event built on the spirit of our past symposia (2020, 2021, 2022) all of which were fully booked, attracting arts therapists, community artists, socially engaged arts practitioners as well as other professionals and scholars within and beyond palliative care internationally.
This year’s theme – “The colours of dying” – brought to the fore the diversity of practices, contexts, research and theoretical approaches that paint the contemporary image of the arts in palliative care. Offering a vibrant and brave space for dialogue among people from different professional, disciplinary and sociocultural contexts was at the heart of this event. The symposium featured different types of presentations and topics including personal stories and examples, new emerging practices, critical perspectives on evidence as well as leadership and wider organisational issues for the arts in palliative care.
The programme includes five key thematic areas: i) Stories, Narratives and Lenses, ii) Knowledge and Evidence, iii) Leadership and Service Development, iv) Equality, Diversity and Marginalisation, and v) Spaces and Community flourishing. Some speakers will be attending in-person and some will be presenting online.
Welcome
David Cameron, St Columba’s Hospice Care & University of Edinburgh, UK
Sara Smith, Queen Margaret University, UK
Beginnings
Giorgos Tsiris, St Columba’s Hospice Care & Queen Margaret University, UK
Curating daily life under extraordinary and ordinary circumstances
Michelle Elliot, Queen Margaret University, UK
The process of image-making and curation of participatory events in exploring how food is used to connect to and commemorate the dead
Alex Mascolo, University of Edinburgh, UK
Building capacity for high-quality research on the role of music therapy in supporting informal carers of people at end-of-life’: MusiCARER project
Tracey McConnell, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
What comes next? Experimenting with outre(sear)ch work during and in the aftermath of the Care for Music project
Wolfgang Schmid, University of Bergen, Norway
What’s the profile of arts services in hospices?
Rachel Drury, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland & Rachel House Children’s Hospice, UK
Giorgos Tsiris, St Columba’s Hospice Care & Queen Margaret University, UK
Discipline, disruption and danger: When a musician becomes the leader
Nigel Hartley, Mountbatten Hospice Group, UK
Colours and memory - Isla Macleod
Once upon a time - Sally McRae
Resonances, change, loss and death - Bruce Armstrong
Reimagining hospice care - Giorgos Tsiris
Queer and trans music therapy in palliative care
Colin Andrew Lee, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
An equity-informed approach to advance care planning with underserved people and communities – The No Barriers Here Approach
Jed Jerwood, NoBarriersHere & Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust, UK
“By indirection find direction out”: Creative approaches to grief and the end of life
Lesel Dawson, University of Bristol & Good Grief Festival, UK
The role of art in increasing skills and confidence around death, dying, loss and care within communities
Rebecca Patterson, Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, UK
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