The Northumbria Healthcare and Northumbria University Arts Partnership, Recipient of The Royal Photographic Society’s Combined Royal Colleges Medal 2011, gave a lecture on Thursday 22 November 2012 at The Royal College of Physicians London NW1 4LE.

For more than 10 years, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and the School of Arts at Northumbria University have worked together on a series of healthcare-related photographic projects as part of a ground-breaking partnership.

This has involved cutting-edge arts in healthcare research through an established PhD programme, engaging local communities and artists and developing Hexham General Hospital as a curatorial centre.

Images of Trust in 2001 by award-winning Japanese photographer Ikuko Tsuchiya was one of the first joint projects. This captured poignant images of the high-quality care delivered in the Trust’s hospitals and the interaction and strong bond between healthcare professional and patient.

As part of the PhD programme, (Dr) Christina Kolaiti’s work explored the link between the practical application of a surgeon’s skill and the artistic interpretation of the orchestrated movements. The resulting video and striking images of The Conductor synthesise the joining of arts and science and have been greatly enjoyed by both academic and healthcare audiences.

Christina also worked with Dr Mark Welfare to help medical students develop healthcare photography projects of their own. This enabled 50 students to ‘see things in another way’, challenging their stereotypes and assumptions on subjects as diverse as addiction, dementia and the internal lives of doctors.

The lecture will be presented by Dr Christina Kolaiti and Ikuko Tsuchiya, MPhil (both award-winning photographers) - as well as the project leaders: Professor Chris Dorsett (artist-curator), Brenda Longstaff (NHS coordinator) and Dr Mark Welfare (consultant physician). It will explore the diverse ways in which the art of photography can be used to both confirm and confront our expectations of contemporary healthcare and consider the role the arts can play in today’s NHS.