RICHARD CREME

The Richard Creme exhibition will be open to the public at the Link Gallery at MMU from 2nd May until 11th May. You can find out more about this show by clicking on the image by international fashion photographer, Richard Burbridge below. More details of the show will be announced next week.

Four members of the North West Arts and Health Network have the opportunity to attend a private party on 1st May with Richard and his special guests...! This is a very, very special event and the nearest the network gets to exclusivity. To have your name entered into the prize draw, simply think about your answer and email it to artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk before 2:00 on 25th April.

1. Which multinational and Olympic Partner do you associate with image 1

2. Which multinational and Olympic Partner do you associate with image 2

3. Which multinational and Olympic Partner do you associate with image 3

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DEBASMITA DASGUPTA

Originally set up as an informal regional network for people living and working in the North West Region, The North West Arts and Health Network has members in a range of countries including amongst others Afghanistan, Canada, India, Lithuania, Mexico and Sweden. Once in a while, its good to share some of the work that’s happening in other countries. One; because its just good to learn more about what we’re all up to and two; because we can be a little myopic in the UK. So, please feel free to get in touch if you are outside the UK and want to share your work, and once in a while we can share. Today, I’d like to introduce some of the work of Debasmita Dasgupta who creates graphic novels for children, and here is her ‘mini fish tale’ published as a blog, which she’s also developed as a free android app for children, with the not-for-profit grassroots organisation; the Bakul Foundation in India. Click on the photo to go to the story-blog.

This work has also been recently developed this into a free android app for children https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.bakul

DEATH TALKER

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Molly Carlile at the First Art of Good Health and Wellbeing, International Conference in Australia. Molly describes herself as a Death Talker: someone who through her professional nursing career, has expended her perspectives around how we live and die. Molly Carlile lives her motto ‘The more we talk, the less we fear’, by encouraging informed conversations about death and grief in order to demystify and de-stigmatise these experiences.  Molly has initiated a number of projects to engage and empower communities to deal more openly with terminal illness. Particularly interested in how the arts can play a part in peoples dying, she is a strong and charismatic voice in rethinking, how we approach are own, and others death. I quote:

“We don’t talk about death because we think of ourselves as immortal. We have faith that no matter what is wrong with us, there will be a treatment that will fix it. We tell our kids that death is something that happens to old people. And so we live in a bubble of denial, hoping that if we don’t think or talk about death, we can avoid it. So when death happens we are poorly informed, badly prepared and often suffer our grief in isolation because we have no one to talk to about how we are feeling.

The time has come for us to face death, to inform ourselves and to build our ability to show compassion to the people around us who suffer in silence and isolation.”

I recently nominated Molly for the 2012 International Journal of Palliative Nursing Awards, Educator of the Year Award. I am thrilled to say - she won it! Well done Molly - and justly deserved. Click on her photo above to see her website.

THREE STORIES ON DEMENTIA

I’ve been trying not to join the ‘viral’ world, but after Claire Ford shared her work in the USA with us at the last networking event, it would be silly not to share this video that has had almost 5,000,000 hits since we last shared it!!! You can find out lots more about this work and more at www.musicandmemory.org  

Here’s another story about he Tricycle Theatre, Improvisation and Dementia. Just click on the photo below.

And finally on the dementia front, here’s yet another feature from the Guardian about music and dementia. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/15/power-song-helping-people-dementia 

PHD OPPORTUNITY

An opportunity for a fully-funded PhD scholarship studying the effects of music making on the health and well-being of young disadvantaged people. Click on the crumhorn above, or link below, for details.
http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/research/postgraduateresearchstudy/studentshipopportunities/healthandlifesciences.aspx

UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, I AM ALIVE

Last week I read a small book by Tom Lubbock who was the arts critic for the Independent and who died last year. It’s a book about his dying and as such, is a wonderful account of what it is to be confronted by your mortality and is neither mawkish or sentimental. What is particularly strong is his account of losing his own word-finding and word-making and how ultimately, for me, this makes the book beautifully considered and nigh-on poetic. He also makes me realise what a bloody wonderful thing the NHS is.

Thank you as ever...