introduction, Arts & Medicine Module, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

We designed and delivered an "Arts & Medicine", Experimental Practice, Choice Module in Feb - Mar 2014. This involved working with 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students from Contemporary Performance Practice, Acting, Musical Performance and Ballet, alongside patients attending day services at a hospice in Glasgow. We shared some of the methods we developed while working in various healthcare settings, and guided students to devise their own creative exchanges with patients at the hospice.

We used performance-based exercises, techniques adapted from Anne Bogart and Tina Landau's Viewpoints technique, group reflection and feedback, and general discussion to explore the issues, ethics and practice of working as an artist in this field.

student's workshop plan for working with patients, Arts & Medicine Module, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Students prepared scores in advance of working with patients at the hospice.

The score below involved patients generating text, improvising hand movements with string, and playing improvised notes on the piano accompanied by one of the students.

observational drawing, Arts & Medicine Module, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

An exercise in close observation and heightened looking involved drawing from a range of objects used in a neonatal ward. Students were asked to draw the space around the object, to do a blind continuous line drawing and to enlarge a small detail of the object.

notating a scene from a film, Arts & Medicine Module, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

This was an exercise in looking and interpreting information into a condensed form so that it could be re-performed elsewhere. The students watched the waiting room scene in Jacques Tati's film "Play Time" and notated whatever caught their eye or they felt was significant to the scene. They could use whatever visual or written style felt appropriate. Some chose to notate colour, hand movement and sounds.

The students then chose someone else's notation and worked in pairs / threes to re-interpret and re-perform that scene. The results were extremely playful and completely different to the scene they had just watched.

This exercise was informed by Ray Lucas' research project "Getting Lost in Tokyo".