Tess is an artist and musician who often collaborates with composers, dancers, poets and puppeteers. She has been working on the Arts for Health team since 2010, developing a multi-disciplinary approach to participation. In 2019 she collaborated with puppeteer Eoin Lynch, composer Justin Grounds and participants in St. Joseph’s Unit, Bantry General Hospital to create Stories from the Well-Field. Funded by an Arts Council of Ireland Arts Participation Award, this interactive performance brought to life poems about enduring childhood friendships. Tess is a graduate of the Curious School of Puppetry in London and co-curator of the Museum of Miniature which completed a tour of 7 off-shore Islands in 2017 and The Museum of Making and Mending co-created with Arts for Health Participants. She plays the cello with the Vespertine Quintet.
I facilitate sessions in hospitals and day care centres that incorporate music, nature, conversation and poetry. Over the past five years on the Arts for Health Programme I have been taught so much by the participants I work with and sometimes these songs and stories end up in the poems we make collectively. Last year I learnt to play the autoharp which I now use to accompany the songs we sing during the sessions.
case-studies of tiny-kind-gestures and the-museum-of-making-and-mending