Annemarie Durcan, community arts practitioner working with Headway Ireland, provides art sessions for people with acquired brain injuries
I work with people who have acquired a brain injury in some way, possibly following a stroke or illness, a car or motorcycle accident, or an accident in the workplace. I provide an art session two to three mornings a week at Headway Ireland's Day Centres in Clontarf, Lucan and Donnybrook, Dublin.
The aim of the sessions is to give those taking part an opportunity to experience a sense of achievement and express themselves creatively.
People at our day centres are often using art materials for the first time.
So by encouraging them to relax, I aim to provide a safe environment for them to enjoy the process of experimental expression.
I will chat to "first-timers" about their lives and try to identify their key fields of interest. Although their short-term memory may be affected, they will very often have great stories to tell about earlier events in their lives.
I encourage them to tell their stories, with the help of art. Or do a piece of work about their particular interest.
They say, "Oh, I can't do art," but very soon with encouragement and help, and watching other participants making art with very little artistic inhibitions, they soon get lost in the colour and paint.
With people who have attended the art sessions previously, my role is to talk to them about their work, find out what they want to express in their work and help them decide how they want to do that.
We then decide what materials are best to use - brushes, sponges, rollers, even their hands, so they can continue with their work.
I encourage participants to make decisions around their work for themselves. This gives them confidence to be self-directed, to use their own ideas and to tell their own story.
Telling their story in their work is a very valuable exercise as it helps to activate different areas of memory.
The use of colour for healing is well known and using various art materials stimulates certain motor skills which can improve overall co-ordination.
Within a few weeks of attending the art sessions, I begin to see people gaining confidence from enjoying the art-making process itself, and from being able to produce a piece of work that is unique to them.
We start each art session around 10am. Concentration levels are high. We take a break about halfway and then continue until lunchtime.
I am a member of Lasadh, (which means light in Irish) which is a community of art practitioners working in the community and healthcare sector. When you work like this, you need the opportunity to speak to others working in the same field.
One of our aims is to encourage more public understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of art created in conducive settings.
And because I see documentation and evaluation as a necessary part of my work with Headway Ireland, I have become more interested in the art of photo-documentary in my own work.
But as a way of escaping from all of this, I find I am getting more in touch with nature as a form of meditation, which is reflected in my art. When you are dealing with the intensity of acquired brain injury, just being alone in nature and working from it, is quite a contrast.