4 March 2024
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
Between March 4 and 6, 2024 Christopher Bailey – a World Health Organisation Arts and Health Lead, will travel to West Cork, Newcastle West, Limerick, and Galway to meet with people and groups doing extraordinary things in local communities.
The Arts for Health Partnership Programme in West Cork has been chosen to be part of this nationwide tour to mark Creative Brain Week 2024. The pioneering arts and health programme has been delivering its programming with older people, artists and healthcare professionals for over eighteen years.
Christopher Bailey
The WHO ambassador for Arts and Health globally, will travel first to Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen on Monday 4 March to meet with advocates, artists and participants who play key roles in the unique programme and then onto the Daycare, Community Hospitals and community settings where the programme takes place.
The tour of some of Ireland’s grassroots arts and health partnership programmes will conclude with a presentation at Trinity College Dublin on Friday 7 March and another the following day at the Project Arts Centre in Templebar.
In 2023, Christopher Bailey joined Creative Aging International and the Global Brain Health Institute for Creative Brain Week at Trinity College Dublin. Whilst in Dublin he spoke eloquently about the power of arts for health, especially for brain health. He met and heard some of Ireland’s experts in this area along with artists, researchers, practitioners and poets, in inspiring a return to Ireland for his tour this year.
Christopher Bailey says; “I am really keen to visit these projects. meet their supporters, learn how they started and understand what sustains them, particularly in these uncertain times.
“As part of Creative Brain Week, I want to see what the experience of locally seeded Irish projects suggests to the rest of the world and I believe that Ireland is a world leader in this field”.
Creative Brain Week will gather some of the world’s experts in arts, creativity, neuroscience and brain health from 4th – 9th March 2024 in Dublin and online. A full week of seminars, presentations, exhibitions and lectures will continue to unlock our understanding of how brain science and creativity collide.
While in West Cork Mr. Bailey will also meet with other pioneering arts and health programmes taking place in the region, including Creative Carers, 49 North Street, Compassionate Culture Network, Bantry Cultural Companions and Creative Places on West Cork Islands.
On March 5, he will be in Limerick West Limerick Resource Centre, to hear about the Travellers Health Programme, Limerick Arts Office and on March 6, he will go to Galway to visit Helium Arts, Saolta Arts, CREATE Ireland, and others.
Creative Brain Week is a Global Brain Health Institute innovation of Trinity College Dublin, presented in association with the World Health Organisation, Jameel Arts & Health Lab, with support from Creative Ireland and the Atlantic Institute.
Now entering its third year, Creative Brain Week has rapidly achieved local and international significance in its examination of how brain science and creativity collide.
This annual week of events explores and promotes the relationships between creativity and the brain in areas including social development, technology, the arts, entrepreneurship, brain health and physical health.