Overview

This book brings together an edited selection of presentations from the Association for Medical Humanities annual conference 2015, held at Dartington Hall, UK, that address the question: How might innovative performing arts help to develop medical education and practice? It includes papers and accounts of both keynote talks and performances, presenting cutting-edge activity, thinking and research in the medical and health humanities. The volume also offers an archive of a visual arts exhibition focused on surgical themes that ran in conjunction with the conference.An introductory chapter situates the conference in the context of Dartington Hall's radical education tradition, while an overview chapter discusses the theme of 'risk and regulation' in contemporary culture, with particular reference to medicine and healthcare. Part I: Selected Keynotes covers three key areas in the conversation between medicine and the arts: 'chance' in health and illness; the contested role of simulation in art and medical education; and risks in introducing arts-based learning to medical students. Part II: Performances archives three innovative and challenging performance pieces presented at the conference, with commentaries and discussion, including a closely-argued philosophical justification for performance art. Part III: Histories offers a historical gaze on: anatomical illustration; plagues represented through art; and poetry written in combat. Part IV: For some, just living is a risk offers a photo-essay on Haiti's symptoms; a photo-record on the regulation of foodways for those living at the edge of subsistence; a medical student's wry account of scepticism towards the use of arts in medical education; and a photo-essay concerning the care of a child with complex disabilities and special needs. Part V: Exhibition 'At the Sharp End of Bluntness' archives deliberately provocative visual work addressing surgical themes and living with cystic fibrosis as 'Slow Death'.

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9781443898881

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Alan Bleakley is Emeritus Professor of Medical Education and Medical Humanities at Plymouth University Peninsula School of Medicine, UK, and Invited Member at the Wilson Centre at the University of Toronto. He is a leading international figure in both medical education and the medical humanities, and the author and editor of fourteen books, including Thinking with Metaphors in Medicine: Re-shaping Clinical Work (2017), and many peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. He was President of the Association for Medical Humanities from 2013 to 2016. Larry Lynch is Director of Education and Co-Executive Director of the Belarus Free Theatre, an award-winning, independent company committed to producing, educating and campaigning in the fields of the arts, internationalism, and social justice. He is a Dartington graduate who facilitated the transfer of Dartington's widely admired education programmes in the performing arts to Falmouth University, UK.Gregg Whelan is Professor of Performance at Falmouth University, UK. He formed the performance company Lone Twin with Gary Winters in 1997, and it has grown to encompass a theatre production company and a community projects arm, producing an ever-diverse range of works for stage, studio and public space.

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