- Arts & Older People
- Bealtaine Festival
Year
Ongoing
Artists
- Various
Supported by
- Galway City Council
- Galway County Council
- Galway Arts Centre
When I was a kid I had a great imagination. Now that’s one thing every kid has. And as you get older you kind of lose it. You grow bigger, bigger, you forget what you did because you have no time and you lose all the imagination. If you kept it up you could maybe be a poet or a great painter. You could have been really good at it. You’re doing something that you didn’t get the chance before. Now I got the chance and I’m going to grab it, like that. I am.
— Participant
The Saolta Arts participative arts programme allows people of all ages to explore their creative potential supported by professional artists. Our longstanding work in the Care for the Elderly and Rehabilitation contexts of Galway’s public hospitals fosters what can still flourish when other things seem to be fading. This has included intergenerational projects across hospital wards and the wider county, the Burning Bright exhibition series in partnership with Galway Arts Centre, and the 6-year reminiscence-based project and publication series, The Cat’s Cradle, followed by two volumes of published prose and poetry in This Never Happened. Every year, our Bealtaine Festival celebrations invite musicians, storytellers, writers, and visual artists to the day rooms of Merlin Park University Hospital to facilitate performances and workshops.
Our skilled Artist Team respects the parameters of the care context and tailors its engagements to the individual needs and interests of participants. For some, the creative process promotes autonomy otherwise limited by ill health, whilst their creative achievements help them to re-evaluate their abilities in the face of change. Whether journeys of the imagination or a change of scene from the ward, a new way of working or a pastime rekindled, our activities spark conversations with new friends and fresh dialogue with old ones.