Overview
Creative arts therapy and arts in health have evolved along distinct trajectories, each with its own history, professional identity, and application in clinical, community, and cultural contexts. In recent years, these fields have become increasingly intersected, creating new opportunities for collaboration and mutual enrichment. This global webinar, part of the IACAET Arts & Health Global Series, brings together leading voices to examine the shared values, unique contributions, and complementary practices of these disciplines. Through presentations, a panel discussion, and open dialogue, participants will explore how these fields can work together to advance human health, well-being, and cultural vitality.

Date: Saturday, February 7, 2026

Time: 7AM EST (New York), 12PM (London), 1PM CET (Amsterdam), 8PM (Beijing)

Online (Zoom)

To easily convert the time to your local time zone, please use this World Time Buddy tool.

**This event will be recorded. Registrants will receive the recording link via email after the live session.**

Abstract: 

In recent years, music therapy in palliative and end-of-life care has been characterised by various practice, research and policy developments. Examples include advancements in our understanding of musical care in palliative and end-of-life care, the publication of best-practice research agendas, as well as developments in advance care planning and assisted dying. All these developments have implications for music therapy practice and research which are currently underexplored.

In this webinar, we seek to offer some critical perspectives on the (un)doing of music therapy drawing from our practice and research experience in palliative and end-of-life care in Scotland, England and Norway respectively. We share the various ways we engage and experiment with collaborative practices with music therapy participants, research methodologies, and outreach work. On the one hand, we focus on the ‘doing’ of music therapy with attention to the materiality and social geography of the work. On the other hand, we promote a critical ‘undoing’ of processes of knowledge generation, their analysis and potential for participation, dissemination and interdisciplinary discourse. 

We present practice and research examples for how we employ ‘gentle’, participatory and productive methods, staying with people and contexts over time, co-creating and embodying ‘knowledge’. We show how we experimented with data analysis and dissemination, and how this led us to the identification of next research and service development questions, informed by all people involved.

Drawing on music therapy-led consultations, ethnographic and arts-based projects, we seek to collaboratively imagine how such approaches can be further developed and integrated to support and instigate changes in cultures and social policy developments for death, dying and bereavement.

Related resources/papers:

Publications

DeNora, Tia, Wolfgang Schmid, Fraser Simpson, Gary Ansdell. (2022). ‘Late’ Musical Learning. What is it, Why, and for Whom?, Scuola democratica, Learning for Democracy 2, pp. 239-260, doi: 10.12828/104552

DeNora, Tia and Gary Ansdell. (2014) What Can’t Music Do? Psychology of Welbeing. Volume 4, article number 23

McConnell, T., Gillespie, K., Potvin, N., Roulston, A., Kirkwood, J., Thomas, D., … & Graham-Wisener, L. (2024). Developing a best-practice agenda for music therapy research to support informal carers of terminally ill patients pre-and post-death bereavement: a world café approach. BMC Palliative Care, 23(1), 33.

Tsiris et al. (2022). Musical care at the end of life:  Palliative care perspectives and emerging practices.  In Collaborative insights: Interdisciplinary perspectives on musical care throughout the life course. OUP.

Tsiris, G. (2024). ‘GRESCO Agape’ – An international songwriting project for hospice patients and school children. In Music therapy at the end of life. Jeffrey Books.

Tsiris, G., & Lee, J. B. (2025). The arts in palliative care: Critical perspectives on evidence and practice. In Research Handbook on End of Life Care and Society (pp. 336-352). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Blogs:

https://www4.uib.no/en/research/research-projects/imagine 

https://islandlifeanddeath.org/ 

https://careformusic.org/ 

Podcasts:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002jhw9

Bionotes

Tia DeNora is Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter. Her current research considers cultures of death and dying in and around a hospice on the Isle of Wight. She is a team member of the IMAGINE project at the University of Bergen directed by Professor Wolfgang Schmid, devoted to rethinking end of life care. She is the author of Hope: The dream we carry (Palgrave MacMillan 2021) and, with Gary Ansdell, co-edits the Routledge Series, Music & Change.

Wolfgang Schmid is Professor of Music Therapy at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen. He also holds a part-time position as a music therapy practitioner at the Palliative Care Center, Haukeland University Hospital. In his participatory and practice-led research, he explores questions regarding the significance and potential of music for people who are seriously ill or dying. In the IMAGINE project, he is particularly interested in how post-qualitative and arts-based methods can promote both institutional and community-based work, as well as contribute to interdisciplinary health-care education. 

Giorgos Tsiris is Professor of Music Therapy at Queen Margaret University and Director of Education, Research and Creative Arts at St Columba’s Hospice Care, Edinburgh.   Since 2009, he has worked in diverse palliative care settings and led award-winning arts initiatives promoting community engagement and death education. Giorgos is the founding editor of Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, and co-author of the recent chapter on The arts in palliative care: Critical perspectives on evidence and practice (2025).

Curator

Stephen Clift is Professor Emeritus, Canterbury Christ Church University, and former Director of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health. He is a Professorial Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and is Visiting Professor in the International Centre for Community Music, York St John University, and the School of Music, University of Leeds. Since 2000 he has pursued research in arts and heath and particularly the potential value of group singing for health and wellbeing. Stephen was one of the founding editors of Arts & Health: An international journal for research, policy and practice. He is joint editor with Professor Paul Camic of the Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health and Wellbeing.