Arts for health

An app to share the art collection at Milton Keynes University Hospital

Arts for Health have made this app to share the art collection at Milton Keynes University Hospital with patients, visitors and staff.

Hospitals are often very stressful places to be admitted to, to visit and to work in. Art placed in a hospital provides an opportunity to be distracted from the worries and stress of the environment. At Arts for Health we want to encourage people to explore art as a way to improve health and healing, it does not serve merely as decoration.

There is a huge body of research surrounding the benefits of art in a healthcare environment,including what Florence Nightingale wrote in 1859:

"The effect of beautiful objects, of variety of objects and especially brilliance of colour is hardly at all appreciated … Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by colour and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect. Variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients are actual means of recovery.”

Our surroundings affect the way we think and feel and clinical studies have concluded that placing artworks in a healthcare environment can reduce levels of anxiety, stress and depression as well as improve communication between patients and healthcare professionals.