Dance for Health is one of the UK's longest running hospital dance programmes, and a leader in the field of participatory dance within acute hospital settings. The programme, which was established in 2014 through support from Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust and the Dunhill Medical Foundation, is embedded on eight wards across the hospital.
I found it exhilarating and friendly. Very welcoming, supportive... and there was empathy for wherever we were with our bodies.
Patient testimony
The programme aims to improve the hospital experience for inpatients so that they can regain their confidence, overall wellbeing and physical strength, and avoid readmission to hospital. Since its inception, the programme has worked with over 5000 people with a wide range of abilities and needs.
Weekly session are facilitated by Cambridge-based professional dance artist Filipa Pereira-Stubbs, and are currently delivered on elderly, stroke rehabilitation, paediatrics and diabetes and endocrinology wards. Supported by clinical ward staff, Dance for Health is a non-clinical creative health practice that is embedded into the culture of care at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.
Space and time is made to engage with and listen to patients in a non-clinical, creative way. Although not therapy, the sessions are often of therapeutic value, and give patients positive and meaningful experiences whilst in hospital.
Filipa Pereira-Stubbs
During 2017-18, Anglia Ruskin University conducted a service evaluation on the programme, which helped to evidence the significant benefits to patients, staff and families. Patients were found to experience a boost to their physical, emotional and social wellbeing, and valued the opportunity to interact with others in a ‘non-medical’ context. The inclusive and flexible approach means that they are accessible and beneficial to patients with a wide range of abilities and needs. Staff are able to develop more personalised relationships with the patients they are caring for, which enhances the level of care provided. Staff identified positive impacts for patients taking part, including; the opportunity to be away from the medical environment; the relief of boredom; an opportunity to socialise and get to know others on the ward and having a calming influence on patients with dementia and/or delirium.
Filipa Pereira-Stubbs - Dance for Health lead artist
Filipa Pereira-Stubbs holds thirty years’ experience in dance & health and in community arts. Filipa devises and delivers dance & health programmes in the community, in clinical settings, in museums and galleries, and outdoors in nature. Her projects always hold inclusivity and integration of the arts at the core, finding inspiration in somatic practice and the process of improvisation & imagination, calibrating and bridging perceived cultural differences, age differences and health differences. Her creative work in the field of medicine seeks to create bridges between subjective, phenomenological perspectives of the body, and the larger naturalist and normative approaches to medicine, health and wellbeing.
‘Patients are invited to participate in a movement practice that they can access at the level most appropriate to themselves. The sessions happen anywhere - in bed, in a chair, in a wheelchair. At all times patients are made to feel comfortable and in control of their own movement. There is no expectation or desired outcome outlined by the dance artist. By focusing on the positive potential of how we want to move, side stepping assessment of what’s wrong, we open ourselves to the wisdom of the body-mind connection and our body’s innate ability to heal.’ – Filipa Pereira-Stubbs
