Performing Medicine Spring 2020

We are organising ourselves so that we can continue to support healthcare professionals and medical students over this extremely challenging period – providing practical support.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will also be sharing resources that might be helpful to all those who are caring for one another in the community. We will be listing these resources at the bottom of this blog post.

There are many brilliant artists, researchers, writers and carers, crossing the fields of arts and health, medical humanities, disability studies who have inspired us for many years. We feel both their innovative practice and philosophical, political thinking may offer insightful perspectives at this time. We are keen to keep listening to those who have long been thinking about the meanings of living with illness, whether individual or population-wide, and to learn from ways that societies have responded across time and cultures.

During this time of uncertainty, when events are being cancelled and postponed, we are inviting our supporters to donate to Performing Medicine in order that we can work with our freelance creative community in the coming months to respond skillfully and creatively to the current landscape.

Here are some perspectives we’ve found useful and inspiring at this time, and in the past. We will add to this list over the coming weeks.

• Amelia Abraham
  • Why coronavirus should change the way we see disability and chronic illness (thought piece)
• Havi Carel
  • Illness: The Art of Living  (book)
  • Speaking on Medicine unboxed  (podcast)
• Martin O Brien
  • The Unwell (film)
• Elaine Showalter
  • Hystories:  Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture (book)
• Atul Gawande
  • Being Mortal (book)
• Susan Sontag
  • Regarding the Pain of Others (book)

Image – Florilegium (Crocus), by Associate Artist Amy Shelton, Honeyscribe