UmanizzARTE

Towards a city-level coordination framework for integrating artistic languages into care environments—between humanisation and cultural welfare. On Monday 9 December, at the Archiginnasio Library, the Bologna Local Health Authority (Azienda USL), the University of Bologna, and the Municipal Department of Libraries and Cultural Welfare, together with several local guests, will present the outcomes of UmanizzArte. The project was designed and promoted by the Centro Antartide in Bologna, with the support of the Carisbo Foundation, with the aim of testing a methodology for the humanisation of care through the arts, reading, and culture across three healthcare settings of the Bologna Local Health Authority.

Students from the city’s art institute contributed works intended for the Community Paediatrics facilities in Borgo Panigale. Photographers brought visual beauty into the semi-intensive care unit of the Ospedale Maggiore, transforming the privacy screens between beds into actual “windows.” Artists also introduced new concepts and forms to redesign the ceiling of the corridor leading to the operating theatres at the San Giovanni in Persiceto Hospital—an area typically travelled by patients on stretchers in states of anxiety and apprehension.

These interventions constitute the experimental core of UmanizzARTE, the action-research project promoted by Centro Antartide and funded by the Carisbo Foundation. The initiative involved the Bologna Local Health Authority, the Municipality of Bologna, and the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, in collaboration with Paciu Maison. It focused on three different healthcare environments and their respective communities, with a single overarching objective: to test and define a methodology for introducing humanisation practices through artistic languages within the city’s healthcare spaces, foregrounding the needs of both healthcare professionals and users.