MedHums Creative Portfolio: Alice Ryrie

August 23, 2016August 23, 2016 / mendtjones / Leave a comment

Our new Students Reflect on MedHums series showcases creative portfolios assembled by students on the MSc in Medical Humanities during the academic years 2013/14 and 2014/15. The journals and portfolios were part of the assessment for the semester 1 module Major Themes in Medial Humanities, led by Sarah Collins and Carsten Timmermann.

We begin with Alice Ryrie, whose artwork, journal and comments demonstrate how creative coursework can lead to fascinating new insights and a deeper understanding of themes in Medical Humanities.

Alice Ryrie, Sanguine, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Choleric, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Melancholic, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Phlegmatic, 2014/15

Alice shared her thoughts on writing a journal for the course:

Being given the opportunity to write a journal was for all of us an exciting, yet slightly daunting task. The journal was a chance to try something a bit different and document thoughts, inspirations and creative ideas with a clear set of aims and framework to focus on.

Some of the ideas I started putting together over Christmas break were articles inspired by newspaper stories or the lives of artists and patients, and others were drawings or pieces of creative writing. At first none of them seemed to fit together, but soon subtle themes began emerging that connected some of the pieces – for example, using metaphors or imagery to create comparisons or humour between medical and non-medical subjects. This really helped to reveal what interested me and went on to inform my dissertation that year.

However, there were challenging parts to creating the journal, too… and not just the mad rush cutting and gluing in things the night before the deadline! In other University assignments I have always felt anonymous: essays are handed in with only a student number marking my identity. But now, I was being assessed not only as myself, but by submitting a piece of work which had grown very personal to me.

This was most obvious on the day we showed each other our work. The six of us sat nervously with our journals, not wanting to be the first to open the cover. However, once we started sharing our ideas, we quickly began to enjoy talking about our journals and appreciating the different styles and themes. I found this day one of the most memorable of our course. We all learned a huge amount from each other, ranging from creative ideas and personal stories to academic papers and book recommendations.

Alice’s journal contains a wide variety of topics, photographs, clippings, reflections, poems, drawings, paintings, quotes, lists, re-writings, collages, illustrations, and analysis. While the examples below are visually compelling in themselves, they are also worth reading in more detail:

Alice Ryrie, Virus, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Louise Bourgeois, Art Therapy and the Stream of Unconsciousness, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Edvard Munch – Illness & Art, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Facial Symmetry & Health, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Homophobia and Blood Donation, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Homophobia & Blood Donation, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, “I smoke for my mental health” – why David Hockney is fighting against anti-smoking campaigns, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Public Health Problems, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Masectomy, Breast Cancer & Narratives, 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Mastectomy, Breast Cancer & Narratives (1), 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, Mastectomy, Breast Cancer & Narratives (2), 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, The Nightshade Alkaloids (1), 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, The Nightshade Alkaloids (2), 2014/15

Alice Ryrie, A day in the life of a medical student…, 2014/15

The journal offered me a way to explore the diversity of medical humanities whilst discovering about my own interests along the way.

All artwork and images © Alice Ryrie.

UPDATE: Bodies, Technologies, Objects

August 22, 2016August 22, 2016 / mendtjones / Leave a comment

Bodies, Technologies, Objects

A Medical Humanities Laboratory workshop at the University of Manchester

Tuesday, 6 September 2016, Whitworth Art Gallery
10:30 am – 4:30 pm

Hand sanitizer dispensers, medicine bottles, surgical knives, bionic eyes: from the mundane and simple to the rarified and high-tech, objects mediate and condition our encounters with medicine, health and illness. How, this workshop asks, can those working in medical humanities engage productively with objects to gain insights into medical care and health experience? What can objects show or tell us that texts do not?

This workshop brings together scholars, artists, and museum professionals to address these questions. In three themed sessions combining presentation and discussion, we intend to explore the analytical, creative, and pedagogical possibilities that a focus on objects offers us.

Binaural stethoscopes, with two rubber tubes, substituted monaural ones in the early 1900s

Binaural stethoscope, Museum of Medicine and Health, Manchester

PROGRAMME

10:00 am – 10:30 am: Coffee and registration

10:30 am – 10:45 am: Welcome

10:45 am – 11:30 am: Session One:
Patients and the medical museum

We begin with Dr Sam Alberti (Keeper of Science & Technology, National Museums Scotland), who discusses how curators are interrogating what medical collections can tell us about the lives and experiences of those treated and other users of medical technologies.

11:30 am – 11:45 am: Coffee break

11:45 am – 1:15 pm: Session Two:
Artists encounter and engage medical objects and technologies

This session features two artists discussing their recent work:

Geoffrey Harrison (London) has been Artist in Residence at Barts Pathology Museum, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and recently completed a Leverhulme residency at The Royal Veterinary College. His anatomically-inspired artwork owes something to his childhood as the son of medical illustrators, but also incorporates an interest in aesthetics, theoretical bodily processes and anatomies that appear broken, but are somehow remade, whole.

Painter Lucy Burscough (Manchester) is currently working with Ocular Bionica (@OcularBionica). This project, a collaboration with Manchester Vision Regeneration Lab and the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, explores the cutting edge sight technologies that hint at a future of biomedical bionics and the hacking of humanity.

1:15 pm – 2:15 pm: Lunch

2:15 pm – 3:45 pm: Session Three:
Teaching with, through and about medical objects

Dr Kostas Arvanitis (ICP, Manchester) and Stephanie Seville (Museum of Medicine and Health, Manchester) discuss how museology students have worked with objects and staff from the University’s collections. This project, which included pop-up exhibitions, intended to develop practical skills while testing theoretical understanding.

Medical historian Dr Harriet Palfreyman (CHSTM, Manchester) discusses her work with the Time Travelling Operating Theatre, an engagement project using historical re-enactment and medical simulation to create conversations amongst clinicians, historians, and the public about the past, present, and future of surgery.

3:45 pm – 4:30 pm: Collective closing discussion

The event is FREE (lunch and tea breaks included).

All welcome, but please register here.

For more information, contact Marion Endt-Jones at marion.endt[at]manchester.ac.uk.

The Medicine Cabinet: A Cross-Faculty Student and Public Engagement Project

August 4, 2016August 5, 2016 / mendtjones / Leave a comment

During the academic year 2015-16, staff and students from the Faculties of Life Sciences (now Biology, Medicine and Health) and Humanities have collaborated with the Museum of Medicine and Health (MMH), the University of Manchester Historian and Heritage Manager and Chetham’s Library to develop a series of public engagement activities that aimed to engage different audiences with the MMH’s collection of medical objects.

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AGMS student putting objects on display for The Medicine Cabinet, Chetham’s Library, 12 December 2015

The project, which was led by Dr Kostas Arvanitis (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures), Dr Carsten Timmermann (CHSTM) and Stephanie Seville (Heritage Assistant, MMH), and funded by the Faculty of Humanities and the Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund, included

a one-day pop-up exhibition in Chetham’s Library, which attracted c. 200 visitors (The Medicine Cabinet: Unlocking Manchester’s Medical History, 12 December 2015)
a family activity at Manchester Histories Festival (11 June 2016),
a social media campaign on twitter, facebook and instagram (May-July 2016), and
a series of four videos, which show MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies students introducing MMH objects they researched for the exhibition.

The videos below, which feature objects as varied as a powder folder, a bronzed wax resin cast of a facial reconstruction of Philip II of Macedon, a nest of three Royal Worcester white crucibles and a McEvedy rectal speculum (proctoscope), provide a fascinating insight into the project and the MMH’s collection:

Learn more about the project here and here.

Click here for more photos of the exhibition at Chetham’s Library.

See also this short interview with Stephanie Seville, introducing her work with the MMH collections on the MedHumLab website.

Five Questions for… Wendy Gallagher

August 2, 2016 / mendtjones / Leave a comment

In this week’s contribution to our regular series introducing MedHumLab members, Wendy Gallagher, Arts & Health Partnership Manager at The Whitworth and Manchester Museum, talks about all things ‘museums, health and wellbeing’.

Wendy Gallagher, Arts & Health Manager at The Whitworth and Manchester Museum

Wendy Gallagher, Arts & Health Partnership Manager at The Whitworth and Manchester Museum

What does your role as Arts & Health Partnership Manager at The Whitworth and Manchester Museum entail? Can you describe what ‘a typical day at the office’ looks like for you?

My working days are always varied as I work in museum and gallery, clinical and community settings at local, regional, national and international levels.

Can you tell us a bit more about the Health & Culture partnership between Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester Museum, Manchester Art Gallery and Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust? What kinds of events and initiatives does it support?

The partnership began in earnest in 2008, with a regional research programme of arts and health activities called Who Cares? Museums, health and wellbeing. We have a long and successful history of working with local communities, such as users of community centres in surrounding wards, older people in residential and care homes, and adults with mental health problems. We provide activities and events for all ages from Parents to Be to Coffee, Cake & Culture: a programme for people living with dementia and their carers.

ArtMED is a collaborative programme between the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, the Faculty of Humanities, the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Museum. The programme involves students and professionals from medical and healthcare backgrounds visiting the museums in small groups to explore works of art and objects in relation to areas of their curriculum or professional specialisms. They also undertake object based lectures in relation to biomedical research, ethics, law and human rights. The ArtMED programme encourages the development of visual literacy for a group of students and professionals whose observational skills will be essential in their future medical and nursing careers. At a deeper level, a visit to the Museum broadens their awareness of the value of culture, enriching their understanding of the world in which we live. The visit demystifies the Museum and affirms the potential for arts and heritage to intersect with the medical world.

‘Museums and wellbeing’ seems to be a burgeoning field of engagement and research. How does your work fit within this wider context?

Arts for health programmes and initiatives are being rolled out in museums and galleries in a number of countries, with networks and partnerships developing between museums and galleries and the health care sector. As we continue to strive to improve access to our collections and provide programmes that promote wellbeing through engagement, evidence is beginning to emerge of the benefits that participation in cultural activities can have for people’s health, wellbeing and quality of life. We know that museums and art galleries are full of objects and artworks of historical, social and personal significance and have developed programmes and resources to engage a wide range of audiences who may not traditionally have visited us. In 2012 the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Museum were recognised by the Royal Society for Public Health with two awards for outstanding and innovative contributions to arts and health research and practice.

How would you define the term ‘medical humanities’?

I would define the medical humanities very loosely as the use of arts and humanities within the medical curriculum.

And finally, how do you relax and unwind away from the office?

I’m learning to play the guitar, and I spend a lot of my free time socialising and travelling with friends. I also like long walks with my border terrier and regular glasses of good red wine.

medhumlab

Manchester

Month: August 2016