Paediatric ICU presents its results after 4 years of work: a mobile library, a podcast and a short story

These works were shown at a public event in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on 15 September.

Our concomitance of Tenerife, Paediatric ICU, started four years ago with the help of its mediator, Felipe G. Gil of ZEMOS98 and a group of five nurses from the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit of the Hospital Universitario Nuestra Señora de Candelaria., with the aim of helping to shape a latent problem: Children who are hospitalised in a paediatric ICU and their relatives suffer stress and anxiety during their stay in hospital. Nursing staff often take care of the emotional situation of patients and their relatives without specialised training, but from their knowledge they have laid the foundations of emotional care, the key to the recovery of the little patients. 

Some of the questions that the project has been addressing are: How to alleviate the stress and anxiety that these spaces provoke by default and by their own dynamics? Is it possible to help nurses, paediatricians and other professionals, through an artistic process and the creation of a cultural product, in the emotional care of patients and their families? In order to respond to them, a space of mediation was created, in which art and culture are put at the service not only of themselves, but also of the social and professional needs of the clients. 

In this process, the group of clients realised that they could turn to creators who could respond to their concerns and needs. In this sense, “as citizens they assume the risks inherent in the creation and discussion of public responsibility for a commission with which the artist recognises, in a dialogue of equals and mutual demand, an interest as legitimate as their own in creating a work of art that will be in the public domain”.”, in the words of François Hers, the Belgian artist who defined the protocol that guides the strategy and procedure on which the practice of Concomitentes is based. 

Public event to present the three works of art: An Illustrated Story, a Podcast and a Mobile Library.

From this rich process, crossed by the experience of the pandemic, three works of art were defined - a mobile library, a podcast and an illustrated story -, which respond to the commission landed by the tandem mediator-constituents throughout this common process built from participation and negotiation. These works were shown in a public event which took place in the Auditorium of the CajaCanarias Foundation in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on 15 September.

Isabelle Le Gallo, director of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation in Spain, made a number of speeches at the meeting, including one by Isabelle Le Gallo, who said: “Within the foundation, we seek to promote citizen art projects that are closely connected to contemporary social and environmental concerns and challenges, but which also affect people”. “This project, in the light of François Hers” protocol, resonates brilliantly with the times we are living in socially and politically, (...) and it is an initiative that had to be given a chance, given wings, which is the focus of our work".”, Isabelle added. “After all this journey, we are here today to see the tangible and real result, which still has a trajectory and will bear a lot of fruit. It is a precious moment and a spectacular work of all those involved”.

The first of the works to be presented, was the mobile library, created by the Canarian architect, Artemi Hernández de la Office of Civic Innovation in collaboration with the artist Octavio Barrera, It has been a challenge to work in such a specific and characteristic space as a hospital, and a Paediatric ICU, with such a wide age range, from babies to 15 year olds, thinking almost that this device was going to provide answers to all the problems of the unit“, he revealed during his intervention. Finally, Artemi concluded that what was sought was: “To facilitate the day to day care work of the nursing team and to be a useful tool to influence the health and well-being of patients and their families”.”. A task carried out on the basis of exchange in which personal desires were abandoned in order to reach common agreements.

The second of the works on show was the podcast, directed by journalist Elena Cabrera: A radio story, which aims to uncover the secrets of this inhospitable hospital environment. In each of the five chapters that make up the season, a “narrative of care” will be constructed, covering the profile and professional trajectory of the five nurses, as well as the details of the journey through a “shift” of work, or the story of the tools that, day by day, help the little patients to understand and move through their admission. During the interview that Felipe G. Gil gave to Elena, accompanied by Quique Chinea and one of the family members who appears in the podcast, the journalist said: "We are very grateful to Elena and her family for their help and support: “I received the invitation to join Concomitentes with great fascination and intuition that there were many stories behind (...) from the first moment I knew that they had these stories stored up and that they wanted and needed to tell them and that I needed to listen to them. But also with fear, because for me, and for the majority of people, hospitals give yuyu and you almost prefer not to know what's going on inside, that's why I realised I had to have the courage to approach that hospital and its stories”.”. The podcast will be available from October on eldiario.es.

The last work was the illustrated story, The project, devised by the Galician author, Miguel López, better known as The HematocriticA physical object of a narrative nature to help nurses manage the emotions and feelings of young patients and to inspire them as they go through the experience of hospitalisation: “Even though we were trained as teachers and they were trained as nurses, we found more things in common than different, we spoke the same language because we worked with children, and we were concerned about listening to them. The process from there was very easy and fun”. The whole narrative has been illustrated by the Canarian artist, Cynthia Hierro, who, together with Lili Quintero, accompanied El Hematocrítico in this conversation.

The cherry on top of an event as emotional as it was profound was the closing speech by the mediator of Nouveaux Commanditaires and former member of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, founding patron of Concomitentes in Spain, Anastassia Makridou-Bretonneau, who reflected on the unknown work of the mediator: “Every project that is realised is a victory against immobility and fatalism, further proof that civil society can be concretely and creatively involved in public affairs, and that art is an essential actor in changing our world. The mediator is nothing more and nothing less than a humble servant of these magnificent causes.

See the photo gallery of the event here.