Children in hospital are being sent “shadowbox” theatre sets created by artists as part of the Galway 2020 European capital of culture programme.
Up to 60 of the tabletop theatre sets are being sent to young patients in the Saolta group of hospitals in the west, with six also sent to paediatric wards in Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght in Dublin.
A shadowbox theatre is a miniature theatre made of cardboard with a screen that can be projected onto a wall.
The sets were designed by artists Sarah Fuller and Manuela Corbari and evolved from an artists’ residency at University Hospital Galway, which is part of the Saolta group of hospitals in Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Donegal.
Margaret Flannery, the director of the Saolta Arts project, said the workshops, which ran before the pandemic, involved making stop-motion animations and incorporating puppetry, storytelling and shadow-play in bedside performances.
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When artists were no longer able to work in the wards before of Covid-19, they “translated their experiences into a table top shadowbox theatre”.
Each theatre set can be brought home in a tote bag designed by the artists, and it includes a seed-paper postcard which can be planted in the ground when the children leave hospital.
“Together they will form a keepsake, and a reminder of the more positive aspects of their hospital experience,” Flannery said.
A suite of recorded stories, A bird at my window and other stories, is also available on the Saolta arts website (saoltaarts.com), and the artists have made a free template to create shadowbox theatres at home.
The project is part of an overall programme of exhibitions and artworks for Galway 2020 on the theme of the influence of the environment on health and wellbeing, entitled The Deepest Shade of Green.
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Several parts of the project will be permanently available online, Flannery says, including Viriditas, a newly commissioned work that includes a song cycle by Ceara Conway, and which was compiled as a series of “intimate performances” for hospital patients.
An online audio-based artwork by Deirdre O’Mahony, entitled Post, includes a scripted voiceover and ambient recordings made in Saolta’s catchment areas and is designed to “evoke the particular character of the west of Ireland”.
“Both of these projects were due to end in April, but will be kept online as a permanent legacy of Galway 2020”, Flannery said.
