The #Art4Knowledge exhibition’s run at the College of Medicine and Health’s Jennings Gallery in UCC has been a great success. This exhibition features artworks produced by participants in the UCC Cancer Trial’s Group (UCC CTG)’s Art4Knowledge art therapy workshop series in collaboration with MTU Crawford College of Art and Design.

Funded by the Health Research Board (HRB) through a Knowledge Translation Award, from January to June 2023 the first Art4Knowledge Art Therapy Workshop Series was facilitated by UCC CTG in collaboration with Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork. It offered an art therapy intervention to patients with/beyond a cancer diagnosis, families of patients with/beyond cancer, and UCC CTG clinical trials teams. Participants were encouraged to reflect on their own experiences, perceptions, and feelings around receiving cancer care and participation in clinical trials (patients/families), and the provision of cancer care (clinical trials teams), which were communicated to each other using creative media. This exhibition at the Jennings Gallery in UCC showcased some of the artworks produced by participants in the workshops.

Art4Knowledge was designed to facilitate those affected by cancer and those working in cancer care to communicate experiences often difficult to put into words. This project is about breaking down barriers between patients with cancer, their families and clinical trials teams, and building bridges of communication within cancer care. The exhibition has been curated by Shelly O’Connor and Julie Horgan, Student Art Therapy Facilitators at the Crawford College.

The exhibition will visit the Waterford Healing Arts building on the University Hospital Waterford campus in early August, giving the Cancer Trials Waterford team the opportunity to experience it, before it is then hung in the oncology wards at the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork for a couple of weeks. In September, to coincide with Culture Night Cork and the 20th anniversary celebrations of Cancer Trials Cork at Cork University Hospital, the Art4Knowledge exhibition will be hung in the Glandore Centre at CUH. The exhibition will finish its tour in the MTU Crawford Art Therapy department building on the Grand Parade, Cork, in October.

The Art4Knowledge Exhibition can now be viewed online here.