panel 5
Arts in Care: Creative Practices at the Crossroads of Culture and Health
“Tunes and Troubles”: Perspectives on Healthcare Musicians’ Ethical Professionalism as Artistic Collaborators in Value-Based Hospital Care
Krista de Wit
In recent years, professional musicians of a participatory music practice named Meaningful Music in Health Care (MiMiC) have worked as artistic allies for value-based healthcare (van der Wal-Huisman, 2024) at two major Dutch hospitals. The musicians have developed ways of encountering and engaging with vulnerable patients and their families, collaborating with healthcare professionals, and guiding recently trained novice musicians. Working with vulnerable people, care professionals and “newcomers” (Lave and Wenger, 1991) in the interprofessional community of practice, the musicians fulfil various roles beyond their conventional professionalism (e.g., musical facilitators, person-centred artists, mediators, trainers/educators, and virtual practitioners), and are confronted with ethical dilemmas, especially as they operate in improvised situations with vulnerable patients. Yet, little is known about their ethical struggles, and how they go about solving them.
This paper explores critically the types of ethical dilemmas encountered by musicians within the MiMiC music practice. Building upon the works of Goldbard and Matarasso (2021), the point of departure is that artists working in any social context will undoubtedly encounter ethical dilemmas, but are often unprepared to deal with them. The research questions are: With which ethical dimensions are musicians confronted in the interprofessional settings of hospital wards, considering how they must adopt multiple new roles? And what can be learned about these dimensions for research, practice and education? The paper builds cumulatively upon completed research on the cornerstones of MiMiC’s music practice, and thick descriptions, which are analysed through the ethical framework of “situational ethics” of music-making (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012), and the ethics of community music (Lines, 2018). The early findings suggest that musicians need structural support for building practical skills and awareness of care ethics, and safe practices, also for their own wellbeing, although the situational ethics of their work are partially safeguarded by collaborative means.
References
Allsup, R. E. & Westerlund, H. (2012). Methods and situational ethics in music education. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 11(1), 124-148.
Goldbard, A. & Matarasso, F. (2021). Ethics and participatory arts. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Lines, D. (2018). The ethics of community music. In Bartleet, B-L. & L. Higgins (Eds), The Oxford handbook of community music (pp. 385-402). Oxford University Press.
van der Wal-Huisman, H. (2024). Adding value to care through live bedside music [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Groningen. https://doi.org/10.33612/diss.856550250
Krista de Wit, PhD, is a teacher-researcher and musician, who works at the Research group Music in Context of the Research Centre Art & Society and at Prince Claus Conservatoire at Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen (NL). Her research focuses on live music and professional musicians in diverse healthcare contexts. She received her doctorate in November 2020 at the University of Music & Performing Arts Vienna (AT). Krista’s PhD research focused on what live music practices can mean for the well-being and occupational learning of care professionals both in elderly care homes and in hospitals, and how they can contribute to the work of the care professionals, hence to the quality of care. Previously, Krista has worked as a teacher at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and as a music educator, community music pedagogue, and performing musician in Sweden and Finland. Krista’s previous master’s research into creating participatory music practices for elderly people with dementia in Stockholm was awarded with the Kerstin Eliasson Prize for Excellence in Research in 2013. In 2022, Krista received the Herta & Kurt Blaukopf Award for her PhD research by the University of Music & Performing Arts Vienna. Krista is a member of the Foundation MiMiC Music, which is a musician collective organising lie music projects in Dutch hospitals and elderly care settings. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6836-6004
The Role of Arts and Culture in the Promotion of Health and Well-being: A Scoping Review
Fredrick Vokey
In recent years, cultural and artistic institutions have become increasingly involved in the promotion of human health and wellness. The creation and implementation of various activities and programs that integrate arts, culture, and heritage have been developed to support individual and societal health and well-being. For example, museums collaborate with healthcare professionals to offer therapeutic visits for those afflicted with cancer; clinicians utilise the power and beauty of natural forests to treat clients with mental health issues such as depression and autism spectrum disorder; hospitals engage cultural workers and artists to improve living spaces for patients. This trend reflects a broader societal and global emphasis on health as a key political and economic concern where health is understood as vital for a functioning economy, and “healthy citizens” are seen as contributors to productivity. Our proposal aims to understand how arts and culture workers position themselves as carers and caregivers within what we term a "global health project." We explore whether this positioning is driven by a need for funding or by a desire to transform and participate actively in health endeavors. We thus examine the unique contributions of arts and culture to health promotion. Through a scoping review of arts- and culture-based projects supporting health, we aim to uncover how aesthetic experiences can enhance health and well-being and how this knowledge can benefit health and care practices to better support caregivers, patients, and families.
Fredrick Vokey is a research professional for the Relief Research Chair in Mental Health, Self-Management and Work at Université Laval in Québec, Canada. He has obtained an MA in philosophy from the University of Calgary and has extensive experience working in mental health research and has a particular interest in research ethics involving vulnerable populations. Mr. Vokey is an amateur artist and musician with an interest in abstract painting and photography and instrumental music.
The Beauty and Power of the Uniform in Theatre and Medicine (artistic/performative contribution)
Nora Korfker & Lotte van den Berg
We are an actress and a medical student/care ethicist. Our contribution is a performance in which we draw a comparison between the medical world and the theatre. In the performance, we will show the beauty and power of the uniform in these two worlds. The audience will watch two characters, a doctor and an actress, both performing their own morning routine. They move into the same room, but do not see each other. A conversation is held between the doctor and the patient (actress), highlighting first the doctor's perspective and then the patient's perspective. In this, it becomes clear that the patient is subordinate to the doctor and feels unacknowledged. Later, the two characters meet again: the doctor goes to a performance of the actress. There the doctor is confronted with how the actress experienced the conversation and thus with her own behaviour. The doctor, during that performance, also feels unacknowledged by the actress. As a result, she thinks back on the conversation and comes to the conclusion that the patient must have felt the same way she feels now. The message of the performance is that power is enclosed with wearing a uniform. (Doctor: white coat; actress: costume). It is important to be aware of this, break through it and reciprocate with the other. After the performance there will be a small piece for the audience to read in which the care ethic background of this performance will be explained in more detail.
Nora Korfker, 24 years old, graduated in 2022 from the acting department at HKU Utrecht University of the Arts, the Netherlands. She is active in the Dutch theatre and movie scene in the Netherlands. She is not only an actor, she also makes theatre herself. Theatre is about telling stories and making people aware of subjects they may have never thought about. She loves to combine her strengths with Lotte on this subject.
Lotte van den Berg, 25 years old, graduated from the Master in Care Ethics and Policy at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and is currently completing the master of medicine at Erasmus University. She will complete her final elective internships in (acute) psychiatry and rehabilitation medicine. For the Master's in Care Ethics and Policy, she wrote her thesis on having a chronic illness in the physician world, partly from her own experiences as a chronically ill doctor-to-be. She recently published an article on physicians living with chronic illness in the physician world. Co-written with Dr. Alistair Niemeijer and Prof. Alice Schippers, the article was published in the Dutch Journal of Health Care and Ethics.
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
Contact info Louis van den Hengel
Images homepage: Merel Visse, Christine Leroy
design website: Johanne de Heus and Marielle Schuurman