Professor Katherine Boydell, co-chair of the Arts Health Network, will be joined by Dr Barbara Doran and Dr Helen Vatsikopoulos at this year’s Vivid Ideas Exchange to talk about arts-based knowledge translation and to present the HIVE: a co-created art installation about health.
Drawing upon a range of artistic media – from sculpture and textiles to poetry and photography – the HIVE explores key issues related to the health sector, including refugee wellbeing, health in urban environments, palliative care, and mental health. The HIVE was co-created by 263 individuals, including artists, researchers, service providers, health consumers and carers.
The HIVE is an arts-based knowledge translation (ABKT) initiative – a means of communicating health knowledge through art. ABKT speaks to audiences who are excluded from conventional modes of research dissemination like as peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. By foregrounding creativity and lived experience, the HIVE creates space for dialogue and story-sharing between artists and health professionals, prioritises empathy and understanding, and challenges the dominant languages of empirical research.