Saolta Arts

Saolta Arts runs the West of Ireland’s leading Arts and Health programme as a means of promoting wellbeing and improving the hospital experience for patients, staff and visitors. Our multi-disciplinary programme of events and activities includes exhibitions, music, theatre, poetry and public art to improve the physical environment for everyone. Supported by professional artists, our participative arts workshops allow people of all ages to explore their creative potential. For some, the creative process promotes autonomy otherwise limited by ill health, whilst their creative achievements help them to re-evaluate their abilities in the face of change. Participants find a more positive, productive use of their time in hospital, engaged in a way that distracts from worries and “makes time fly”. Whether journeys of the imagination or a change of scene from the ward, a new way of working or a pastime rekindled, our activities spark conversations with new friends and fresh dialogue with old ones – making the clinical environment feel more human. Initiated in 2003 and working as Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust in Galway’s public hospitals for ten years, we relaunched as Saolta Arts in 2019. Our expanded programme for Saolta University Health Care Group extends our services to Letterkenny University Hospital, Mayo University Hospital, Merlin Park University Hospital, Portiuncula University Hospital, Roscommon University Hospital, Sligo University Hospital and University Hospital Galway.