Report - The International Association for Music and Medicine, and the International Society for Arts and Medicine (IAMM / ISFAM) Future of Music and Arts in Medicine and Health Conference.
Blog Report by Alexandra Caulfield - Academic Clinical Fellow in General Practice
Member of the GP SIG for Creative Health >>
‘The greatest medicine of all is to teach people how not to need it’ - Hippocrates
‘The Future of Music and Arts in Medicine and Health’ international conference took place in September 2024 at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Hospital in Berlin, Europe’s largest university hospital. It was the first joint conference of the International Association for Music and Medicine, established for many years, and the newer International Society for Arts and Medicine, founded in 2023 with the aim of highlighting the important connection between arts and medicine. There were 630 attendees, 240 oral presentations, 27 workshops and three music events, bringing together clinicians, arts therapists and other stakeholders from all over the world.
The conference felt different from other conferences I have attended - this started with the welcome stall in the atrium, advertising ‘the world’s only shoes for piano performances’, in all sorts of sizes, shapes and colours. A stall alongside offered the opportunity for participants to get involved in a creative art project during the conference. In the opening plenary, speakers from the US, Hong Kong and Australia, gave an overview of the history of arts and medicine, and the current role arts are playing in different initiatives globally. A particular highlight was learning about the MATCH project, which aims to evaluate the usefulness of a mobile app for caregivers of people living with dementia. The app is designed to support caregivers in Australian community settings to use music to ease dementia symptoms. This research is increasingly important in the context of ageing populations globally, as more and more of us find ourselves impacted directly or indirectly by diseases such as dementia.
The session ended was brought to a close by Claire Oppert, a cellist and music therapist who works at the Sainte-Périne Hospital in Paris. She had paired the words of patients (projected on slides behind her), with short improvised pieces reflecting their feelings or responding to their requests for a particular style of music, including Viennese waltz and Arabic rap. Her performance was met with a standing ovation. It was a poignant reminder of the human aspects of medicine, and several of the quotes highlighted the role that music can play in accessing and touching experiences of an illness which the biomedical model cannot.
The variety of sessions was enormous; I was able to attend sessions on the Rote Nasen or ‘Red Noses’, a clown organisation working in German hospitals, a discussion on a music and acupuncture intervention to improve insomnia in college students in Qingdao China, and learn about the challenges and benefits of setting up a medical humanities partnership between the University of Virginia medical school and their local art museum. Coffee breaks offered the opportunity to learn more about the backgrounds of other attendees: an attendee from Canada was investigating musical features associated with a feeling of being moved by a piece of music, and incorporate his findings into a software package designed to help manage agitation in dementia. Another spoke of her challenges getting funding for her work as a music therapist in the US, where music therapy is funded almost exclusively by charities.
Lack of funding or long term funding opportunities was a common discussion point, as well as how to advocate for the role of arts alongside and within health systems and busy clinical curricula. There was little by way of discussion of the mechanisms and contexts which underlie how creative arts impact wellbeing in older people living in the community (the topic of my research) but much food for thought in various lectures - for example, a museum space acting as a ‘sanctuary’ for stressed medical students (does place play a role? the permission to temporarily step out of a medical role?), or a quote from a patient when listening to the cello music - ‘I lifted myself above my illness’ when (a mechanism of spirituality? Distraction from current circumstances?).
I was reminded of the fact that by virtue of attending the conference, most participants were likely to believe in the positive value of arts alongside health. It is important in this context that we remain self-critical of our methods and findings. One intervention, looking at music for caregivers of dementia patients in Australia, found only 2/3 could meet the minimum intervention time for a music intervention with their relative - could this have been due to a lack of time, or other competing responsibilities? The arts and health research community has a responsibility to identify the right time and place for interventions, and to understand that they must fit around busy and complex life situations. Future directions include development of theories which seek to explain when, how, for whom and to what extent interventions work in real life situations, and development and critical analysis of new methods which accommodate epistemologies rooted in both healthcare and arts backgrounds. I look forward to the next conference!