Out of Our Heads! Four perspectives on the curation of an on-line exhibition of medically themed artwork by UK medical undergraduates

Abstract

The Medical School at Bristol University is noted for offering, and in some instances requiring, its students to work creatively with medical themes. Students, artists, educationalists and a web designer have worked to create an on-line exhibition of the resulting creative output. This can be viewed at www.outofourheads.net. This site is a themed repository of poetry, prose, drawings, paintings, cartoons, films, music, dance and rap. Most works come with commentaries that can be as illuminating as the works they describe. The site invites comment and welcomes new postings from anyone connected to medicine. As an alternative to the conventional pedagogical report, and in keeping with the subject matter, in this paper we tell the story of this unique educational enterprise through the narratives of four of its principle architects. The ‘Teacher's Tale’, the ‘Designer's Tale’, the ‘Curator's Tale’ and the ‘Artist's Tale’ offer different, personal, tellings of how the site came to be. Each tale contains hypertext links to notable works on the site some of which have become teaching resources within the institution. This paper is of relevance to anyone who seeks to explore and champion the human insights of this privileged community.

The role of poetry and prose in medical education: the pen as mighty as the scalpel?

“…During this period the poetry and prose courses at the University of California have developed from an elective course into a full-fledged part of the curriculum [17]. Similar tendencies are reported from the United Kingdom [14]. …”

“…To do this, we will examine several initiatives to promote literary activities in medical curricula around the world. As it turns out, most of the reported initiatives in incorporating literature courses are set in motion with a pilot group of volunteers, or as an elective course within the regular curriculum [12, 14, 15]. Results from several institutions show that poetry carries additional value in developing communicative skills and increasing detection and understanding of (one’s own and others’) emotions [15, 16].…”

“…However, it might be just as useful to reflect on patients’ poetry, experiences by patients’ relatives, or a physician’s prosaic point of view. Several patients and patient associations have published poetry and a notable example of medical students’ work can be found on the interactive website issuing arts and humanities projects by Bristol students [14, 21, 23]. …”

Arts-based palliative care training, education and staff development: A scoping review

“…49 Commonly, mandatory programmes were met with initial scepticism. [50][51][52][53][54][55] For the majority of participants, however, this could be resolved as the healthcare professionals engaged in the activities: most people had serious reservations about this compulsory creativity … the 'jack the lad', known for throwing paper planes from the back of lectures, stood and delivered a mournful and poignant poem about sibling love and loss of innocence. It soon became apparent that while everyone was pretending not to care, they had been secretly and ferociously painting, drawing and composing.…”

‘Compulsory creativity’: rationales, recipes, and results in the placement of mandatory creative endeavour in a medical undergraduate curriculum

“…We have since created an on-line exhibition that can be viewed at www.outofourheads.net. The story of the creation of this website is included in an accompanying paper, ‘Out of Our Heads! Four perspectives on the curation of an on-line exhibition of medically themed artwork by UK medical undergraduates’ (35). …”