The Arts in Health Care

If you want to start an arts project in your ward, hospital or community, this book is for you. From planning the project to fund-raising and evaluation, it will tell you how to create 'a less threatening health care environment'. It shows how the arts can make a significant contribution to ensuring high quality patient care.

Psychotherapy and Counselling

This work is "intended to be a practical book,"not a "philosophical book" and expresses the editors' intention to "open up possibilities in the reader's mind". Its target readership is practically everyone in the NHS, from support staff up to chairmen of authorities and trusts, plus architects, artists, voluntary organisations, grant makers and sponsors - there is something for everyone. To all those working alone or as part of a team in the arts and health scene, it must have come as a real bonus that the book was conceived, contributed to, and edited by two experienced and respected health managers, Charles Kaye and Tony Blee. Along with their own essays, they have collected and selected writings from representatives of a variety of practitioners in this area of work, both in the UK and from the US. There are many interesting and stimulating strands running through the book. I am sure this is the editors' intention and that it will lead to generous and constructive debate. Patient-focused care and patient-centred care get the airing they deserve, but dig deeper and some welcome and surprising views are expressed, from some unexpected quarters. The chief virtue of this new book (which is a must for all those working in this field), is that it describes and illustrates moves currently being made by many to bring about attitudinal change.

Hospital Development

This book is a resource for anyone interested in empowering patients with the help of artists using art as a catalyst for change. The book makes an important point by highlighting the need for good support from managers and administrators to the success of arts projects. It also gives information on funding sources and evaluation... hospice staff, volunteers and students could use this book as a resource for ideas for what is possible and also for a better understanding of the benefits of arts in health care 'for the equal importance to mind and imagination when treating physical illness'.

Information Exchange (National Council for Hospice and Specialist Palliative Care Services)

Thorough-going survey of arts-for-health projects, ranging from the work of the Liverpool Tate at Ashworth Special Hospital to the 'art that heals' programme at Los Angeles Medical Centre.

Architecture Today

For a wide audience (NHS personnel; planners, architects; voluntary grant agencies), the book surveys the arts in British healing settings, with American comparisons. The book offers a useful beginning in a very important area... valuable in its broad sweep, and practicality, and immensely encouraging in the work which it documents.

Ursula Newell, Art Therapist