Bringing Art Home - In West Cork      
Friday 17 September to Wednesday 17 November
Curated by Michael Greenlaw and Benedicte Coleman

Day Care Centres in West Cork have been closed since March 2020 and this has meant that for the last 18 months, members have not been able to get together for social, health and creative activities.

To try and find a way to create social engagement and make a pathway for participation in the arts, the Arts for Health team came up with Bringing Art Home with Programme Manager Justine Foster and artists Liz Clark, Bénédicte Coleman, Sharon Dipity, Michael Greenlaw, Justin Grounds, Anne Harrington and Fiona Kelleher. Each artist was commissioned to devise a postal project to engage in a creative exchange of drawings, poems, thoughts and memories with their Day Care Centre participants.

In May 2021, to coincide with the Age & Opportunity’s Bealtaine Festival which is Ireland’s national celebration of the arts and creativity as we age, Arts for Health published a booklet sharing excerpts of the creative exchanges. This exhibition presents first-hand, the original correspondence shared at such a historic time. On view are drawings, paintings, poems, and written recollections, reflecting the memories and present-day concerns of the participants.

This exhibition, launching on Culture Night 2021, shows the first series of correspondence from Bringing Art Home, along with additional work produced by participants as part of the second phase of the project, Ways and Means which has been ongoing since May and led by artists Michael Greenlaw and Bénédicte Coleman:-

‘We hope you find the exhibition of interest; we believe it shows the tremendous creative talent lying within older people in our community and the amazing wealth of knowledge they possess.’

Arts for Health is based in West Cork and provides a managed and integrated arts programme for older people in healthcare settings.

The Arts for Health programme is based on an inter-agency partnership between West Cork Arts Centre, Cork County Council's Arts Office, Cork Education & Training Board and Cork Kerry Community Healthcare. Cork Kerry Community Healthcare is represented by Cork South Community Work Department, the Nursing Directors of Community Hospitals and the Day Care Centres, West Cork. 

The delivery of the programme is through a multidisciplinary artists’ team which is managed by Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre. The team have established a close, professional working relationship with the staff and management of each care setting. The artists, each with distinctly different practices, have developed their professional expertise in working with older people and numerous individual and collaborative projects have been undertaken since it began in 2005.

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council and Cork County Council