Art in healthcare facilities provides powerful ways to tell stories, create connections, evoke emotion, and encourage healing. Through years of research, healthcare professionals have discovered the power of art in healthcare settings. With any built environment, interior designers and architects are tasked with making design selections that positively impact the patient and family experience. From private rooms to natural light in the building, there are hundreds of decisions that impact the overall experience.

 

Types of Healing Art in Healthcare

  • Art collections
  • Music
  • Visual art therapy
  • Music therapy
  • Performing arts
  • Storytelling
  • Interactive art

Roles of Healing Art in Healthcare

  • Establish wayfinding
    • Use at pivotal points throughout the space
    • Use unexpected artwork that does not fade into the background
  • Activate large spaces and foster movement
    • Forms/shapes and colors encourage movement through art
  • Create inspiration
  • Create an area of escape/respite
    • Use biophilic-inspired elements to promote well-being and reduce stress
  • Representation/visibility of people
  • Encourage dialogue
  • Capture imagination
  • Inspire curiosity
  • Create unity, togetherness

 

 

Creative Ways to Incorporate Art

At Olee Creative, we specialize in creating unique, custom pieces of art to fit a project's specifications. We work together with facility and practice managers, interior designers, and architects to select the perfect art for the space. Over the years, we have helped create several unique applications for healing art in healthcare to promote respite, encourage dialogue, create wayfinding, and create positive distractions through interactive art. Check out some of our healthcare projects to gather inspiration for your next project!

Beacon Children’s Seek and Find

The Olee Team worked with hospital leadership and interior designer Holly Foley, to create fun, colorful, interactive artwork to help get patients out of bed and engaged. The “Seek and Find” concept is designed to be a sort of scavenger hunt where the PEDS patients are given a card with 6 items for them to “find” hidden in the artwork or the lexan display boxes. Hundreds of items and images were chosen and there are enough cards for kids to have a different combination for weeks, giving them something to look forward to during a long hospital stay.

 

 

Memorial OB Labor and Delivery

The Olee team worked with the interior designer to select uplifting nature images for the headwalls that brought comfort and beauty to the family space and pulled the art, fabric, and color scheme of the room together. Olee Creative Type II wallcovering was an affordable and transformative solution.

 

 

 

Memorial Hospital Discharge Lounge

The Olee team worked with Memorial Hospital Leadership to add a unique Type II custom wall covering to the Memorial Discharge Lounge to add environmental enhancement and biophilic design. This custom wall covering makes the discharge lounge a more pleasant and intriguing area for patients and staff.

 

 

 

Beacon Children’s Art Therapy Dept MGS

The Olee Team worked with Beacon Children’s Hospital Art Therapist Sarah Tyler to develop magnetic wall panels as an art wall that allows patients on PEDS and PICU (pediatric intensive care unit) an opportunity to create artwork which is collaborative with other patients on the floor. The Olee Team provided their Magnetic Graphics System which allows the artwork to adhere to the magnetized wall, using magnetic receptive paper that the patients apply their art to. The art therapy display is cheerful and provides a space for creative, unique, and meaningful artwork created by the patients to be viewed daily by staff and families.

 

 

St. Vincent Children’s Hospital

The designer's vision was to customize the OleeVue Lakeside 440 pattern with animals that were indigenous to this region; bears, rabbits, deer, raccoons, turkeys, squirrels, owls, and blue heron. The Olee design team sourced the images and customized the privacy level of the film by working closely with the designer on the custom grey and white ink opacities. The finished graphics transform this space with the power of nature and give children enjoyment through biophilic design.

 

 

 

Michiana Hematology Oncology Wayfinding

Olee Creative provided wayfinding graphics, area identification, and inspirational door messages for patient exam rooms with contour cut self-adhesive vinyl. Contour cut graphics are a cost-effective way to create custom messaging to mark spaces, create wayfinding, share quotes and more.

 

 

 

 

 

Adding healing art in healthcare facilities can come in many different designs and forms. Looking to add artwork to your facility? Olee Creative designers will work with you to create fun eye-catching pieces to set your facility apart. Contact Olee Creative today!