Art, Health and the Royal Scottish Academy

Art, Health and the Royal Scottish Academy is on at the National Galleries of Scotland: National on Monday 9 November, from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. It's a talk put on by the Scottish Healthcare Collective, and it runs alongside a touring exhibition of visual artworks by RSA Academicians and Award Winners.

The session opens with Sandy Wood, Head of Collections at the RSA, and Jackie Sands of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. They'll be talking about how art collections and creative programmes actually work within healthcare settings. After that, the conversation shifts to the artists themselves: Toby Paterson RSA, Kate Downie RSA, Ade Adesina RSA, and RSA award winner Rowan Paton, who'll discuss what it means to them to have their work in a healthcare collection.

There's a specific thread running through the whole thing, too. The talk draws on Florence Nightingale's 1859 observation that the effect of beautiful objects and brilliant colours on patients is physical, not just mental. That's the kind of thing the artists will be responding to when they talk about their work hanging in a hospital or clinic.

It's all part of RSA200: Celebrating Together, a partnership project bringing together hundreds of artists, partners, galleries and institutions to mark the bicentenary of the Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture. The exhibition itself is touring, so this talk is one stop on a wider national run. The programme is delivered by the Scottish NHS Arts Partners, the Art for Health - Scottish Healthcare Collective, which includes OutPost Arts, NHS Dumfries & Galloway, Art in Healthcare Scotland, Tonic Arts, Grampian Hospitals Art Trust, Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust, Artlink Central and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

It's free to attend, and you'll find it in the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre at the National Galleries of Scotland: National, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL, on Monday 9 November from 1:00 to 4:00 pm.