The Vital Signs conference took place on 15 October in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Dublin. Over 150 delegates attended the event, which was chaired by Vincent Woods, poet, playwright and RTÉ Radio broadcaster.
The conference explored the areas of arts participation, architecture, medical humanities and the Percent for Art scheme. Speakers and delegates also discussed the opportunities and challenges for artists working in healthcare settings, the value of arts and health practice, and the needs of the sector moving forward.
A summary of the conference, speakers’ papers and podcasts are available in the conference section of the website.
Willie White, Director of the Project Arts Centre, reported from the conference using Twitter. The Vital Signs Twitter stream can be accessed at http://twitter.com/artsandhealth
May I offer this piece, because I think that public libraries are also vital in the Arts and Health context:
The Limerick-born writer Frank McCourt died recently. As a schoolboy in Saint Patrick’s School in Limerick city I often played football and hurling against teams from Leamy’s School, which was the school McCourt himself attended.
I have some first-hand knowledge of the poverty described by McCourt in his book Angela’s Ashes.
The Spanish writer Elvira Lindo had this to say about McCourt in the Spanish newspaper El Pais. What she writes here is what drives much of what public librarians do in their day-to-day work.
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“McCourt discovered Shakespeare as a teenager in the library of a hospital when he was recovering from an infection caused by the unhygienic conditions he lived in. He says he read some verses of poetry aloud, and felt that his mouth was full of diamonds.
“He never forgot the idea that education, respect and humour can rescue us from degradation, can rescue us from a disaster that seems inevitable. In the last few days I have often thought of what it might mean to encounter a person like McCourt, for children who are growing up without knowing the meaning of education, respect or the sense of humour which is very different from cruel mockery.
“A McCourt may appear in your life in the form of a schoolteacher, a father, a mother, or an older brother: someone who could teach you to protect yourself from the cruelty of others, and not to exercise it on others, to repent when you do harm, and not to hide in the collective barbarism of the group.
“How many McCourts does our educational system need?
“Adolescence is sprinkled, more or less densely, with shameful memories. But there was always, at least in my case, someone who taught me to feel sorrow about the pain of others and to feel happiness about the happiness of others. How many McCourts are needed to educate the many groups of young people whose lives sometimes descend close to savagery, whom parents and the education system have abandoned to their fate, a self-indulgent system, that dooms poor children to be not just poor, but brutal too?
“There ought to be a shrine to this lay saint, St McCourt, where you could light a candle and beg him to turn the rudeness that tarnishes so many mouths these days into those words that in McCourt’s mouth were transformed into diamonds.”
end of quote
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I have seen poverty, and, may I say, I have some up-close knowledge of the difference which education makes.
I believe that we do have the shrines which Elvira Lindo writes about. These are our local libraries. These are the places of education and respect which “can rescue us from the degradation” which Elvira Lindo describes. That is why I always get some small sense of satisfaction every time I see a young man or woman walk out the door of any of our libraries with a Camus or a Steinbeck under their arm.
Elvira Lindo sets out here why libraries are so important to children who are growing up without knowing the meaning of education, respect or humour. And that is why I believe, in the midst of the problems which I and many other librarians are facing, that it is vital that all of our libraries remain open and functioning in these difficult times of recession.