Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Deprivation in Hospitals

Abstract

Abstract Evidence exists that the arts enrich health care settings in multiple ways. Arts interventions in hospitals can improve quality of care, communicate welcome, relieve anxiety, offer opportunities for self-expression, individualize care and support rehabilitation and recovery. Interdisciplinary collaboration, for example between hospital building managers, senior clinicians, and creative curators, is required to achieve aesthetically enriching hospital environments that contribute to the mental well-being of service users and health-care staff. This chapter demonstrates the role of aesthetics in hospital and is grounded in the author’s twenty-five year experience as a manager, music therapist and musician, working in the field of arts and health in health-care settings. Examples include a study of older adults in hospital in which aesthetic interests are mapped; a collaborative project between a consultant anaesthetist and a music therapist that provides music interventions in chronic pain care; a song writing project for mental health service users and a study of the benefit of singing for health-care staff. The arts can afford opportunities for articulating and interrogating lived experience at observational, participatory, and creative levels whilst coping with ill health including pain and vulnerability. Awareness of the aesthetic dimension may aid the articulation of complex human experience, and the effect of aesthetic neglect or deprivation in healthcare settings is highlighted.