This minor examines how participatory artistic work practices can be connected in an inclusive way with work practices in healthcare.

The pressure on the healthcare sector is currently unprecedented. The aging population in the region is not an additional concern. This leads to a situation in which healthcare professionals go to extremes and people who need care have to wait longer than stated. This situation pays little attention to the human needs of both professionals and patients. This in turn causes staff shortages and additional care needs for patients. In this minor we look at the hospital – using methods from participatory art and artistic research – as a community. In this community there is an intrinsic desire to contribute to human dignity and the accepted well-being of everyone. From this desire to contribute, we see - instead of a slew of shortages - a potential abundance. Hence the title of the project: Cornucopia means ‘horn of plenty’.

The collective and accessible exploration of the needs and requirements that exist in the healthcare institution within an artistic interdisciplinary context is crucial. A number of central questions are: “How can we give meaning to waiting within the hospital?; Can we also think of a meaningful outlet for the overburdened employee? What is the role that students, local residents and family members can take within this context?” In this way, students use concrete, inclusive and participatory tools to develop a story in which each member of the community can renegotiate their position and meaning. We want to look beyond the care needs and think in terms of the added value that we can provide for each other.

The concepts of “inclusive” and “participatory” and “artistic” are essential in the way of working for the project. They are fundamental building blocks in this process:

• Inclusive: it is the person with the greatest vulnerability who forms the starting point for the work process. This immediately sends a signal to everyone: every form of vulnerability is respected, embraced and seen as an opportunity to think further and broader. This is a process that makes every community healthier.

• Participative: all processes within this process are based on involving staff, family members, patients and local residents. It is their desires and needs that form the basis of the projects to be realized. This guarantees direct involvement and ensures that the intended projects are fundamentally relevant to the community.

• Artistic: It is important to monitor the artistic quality and sharpness of the project. This guarantees the leap to the imagination, which makes new working methods, encounters and ambitions possible. It is this artistic imagination that gives breathing space and makes a new positioning in relation to each other possible.

• Connecting knowledge, care and community: The project aims to create a strengthened and tangible relationship between existing knowledge domains within healthcare institutions and the community of the Randwyck district, by connecting students with context-specific challenges.
• Interdisciplinary approach: Creating a symbiosis where ideas and creativity come together, with people's daily lifeworld as a central starting point.
• Developing innovative solutions: Through applying and translating interdisciplinary, artistic knowledge in a creative and practical way to actively involve students in the innovative solutions project.
• Social cohesion valuable: The project stimulates social cohesion through involvement with the local community of the hospital and beyond, connecting different layers of the population.
• Overcoming local challenges: Local constraints are mitigated through close collaboration between students and the community. This stimulates a bottom-up approach to existing problems in the neighbourhood.

Target groups: study programmes in Arts, Healthcare and Wellbeing

Requirements:

• You have a clear interest in the themes of the course;
• You are eager to engage with participatory forms of artistic research;
• You are able and willing to collaborate with others;

Contact hours (+/- 80): fixed contact times during the week

Description of meetings: Practical education in artistic research; lectures with associated teaching assignments; project education

We expect students to be available full-time

Presentation of the final work and documentation of the artistic research process, 15 EC, minimum Pass

Cooperating study programmes/research centres: What Art Knows, Cultuurmakers Maastricht, Gemeente Maastricht, MUMC+, Stichting Woonpunt, Stichting Traject and Rest4TheWicked