What does it mean to be an artist working with people? To make art with people who may be at their most vulnerable? To foster connections in systems that weren’t built for art?

Artist Helen Keenan works at the intersection ‘where art and complicated lives are met.’ Collaborating with older adults in residential care through dance, poetry and art, Helen meets people who are making a life in a ‘home’ that is not their own, some of whom she notes are ‘operating within a different internal reality.’

Helen delves into the complexities of being an artist in this space in a new poetry collection, funded by the artsandhealth.ie Emerging Artist Bursary. The 13 poems and concluding reflective thoughts that form Arts & Health Practice – A Poetic Reflection are a rich exploration of artist identity, meaning-making and human connection.

Just Be

By Helen Keenan

Not knowing what to say

Not knowing what to do

Seeing people in a home

There is nothing to say

There is nothing to do

Just an invitation to be...

We meet Betty with the ‘gentle touch’ who is warm and joyful. Betty who can fly in the moment when she is not overtaken by fears of walking because walking can mean falling. Betty has trouble remembering but she remembers the husband she loved so much. With Helen, she creates a locket, in the locket his picture: “She looks at it surprised every time / overcome with joy and a little tear.”

“In Ego Disguised as Dreams” Keenan contrasts the impulses of the artist striving ‘to dazzle and amaze’ with one whose work is guided by human connection, ‘unseen in an uncelebrated phase.’ When we make art with people we confront ‘The messy that is difficult …. / Where the output, the “masterpiece” cannot be grown.’

Helen doesn’t flinch from the messy humanness of it all: the woman who wants to dance but is afraid to fall (‘I’ll just sway here in my trance’); the dreaded ‘waiting room’ where ‘art’ is delivered to people who ‘grow stiffer;’ the people who know Helen is here beside them and the people who don’t; the family members who haven’t arrived.

To be an artist in healthcare is to confront mechanisms built for efficiency that go against the grain of art, the red tape, the fear of new, the ‘characters and systems that don’t do their part.’ What is an artist to do?

Go with the flow

Be with the people in the room

Respond in the moment

And very soon

You’ll see that that tight grip

you had on your plan

may have worked for some

but not every woman or man

Helen operates in the ‘power of now’, small moments of conversation, energy, laughter, moments that really aren’t small at all, that are the very essence of what life is about. In the end, her poetry collection is also a plea, to recognise that we too one day will face the failings of our bodies and our minds. Why do we treat people who have lived full lives and who have much wisdom to impart with such disrespect?

Let your eyes be open

And that too of your heart

Separate not society

because age and capacity may set us apart

In her final reflective thoughts, Helen notes that communicating with someone experiencing cognitive decline means embracing the silence rather than engineering conversation, going along for the ride rather than trying to force ideas of reality, and always adapting to and being in the moment.

Helen has also provided an introduction to her poetry collection, Reflections on My Arts & Health Practice: Interrogating Process VS Product. Here, she grapples with the perception of the artist as someone who makes ‘physical art’ when the reality of the artist in healthcare is that this is always secondary to ‘making space for a shared human experience.’ The pressures of producing something often come down to the requirements of funders or partners. And Helen is clear that we need to realign this thinking, because what we are producing can be ‘life changing interactions.’

by Helen Keenan (source: www.artsandhealth.ie/health-practice-a-poetic-reflection ), 2026-03-05