About Us
We make now better
Waterford Healing Arts programmes bring music, visual art, creative writing, poetry and storytelling patients at University Hospital Waterford (UHW) and other healthcare settings to reduce anxiety and stress for patients, family members and staff, and to ‘soften’ the clinical environment. Waterford Healing Arts Trust (renamed Waterford Healing Arts in 2023) was founded in 1993 by Dr Abdul Bulbulia, Mary Baxter and a committee of Waterford people who believed in the power of art to transform the hospital environment (for more on our history, please see Our History). The Waterford Healing Arts programmes are part of Réalta, the national organisation dedicated to developing arts + health in Ireland.
Today, examples of our work include bringing art making and storytelling to children in the Paediatric Ward, and creative writing, art, music and storytelling to the Renal Dialysis Unit; We invite mental health service users to participate in over 300 arts experiences in the Dept of Psychiatry and in community settings every year.
We also work with older people at UHW and Waterford Residential Care Centre, and we bring art making to people’s homes through our Art at the Kitchen Table programme.
Our work is not ‘therapy’, but it is inherently therapeutic, lifting spirits, reducing loneliness and bringing a little joy at a difficult time in a person’s life.
The Waterford Healing Arts programmes are part of Réalta, the national resource organisation dedicated to developing arts + health in Ireland, which is core funded by the Arts Council and supported by the HSE. Réalta is based at the Centre for Arts + Health, University Hospital Waterford.