The Power of Art in Healthcare: A Conversation with Anne Carlyle

We spoke with Anne Carlyle, Principal at Carlyle Design Associates, about the healing potential of art in healthcare spaces. Here are the insights she shared with us:

"I love the challenge of finding the through-threads or common ground amongst all the groups."

Q: What drew you to the arts and healthcare design?

For over 40 years now I’ve been designing for healthcare. Ninety percent of my work is for the public sector, in all kinds of facilities—from hospitals to children’s treatment centers to community health centers. I like working with big organizations on complex projects with multiple constituents. I love the challenge of finding the through-threads or common ground amongst all the groups. It’s a very rewarding process. Each project is different, because each client is different. There’s no singular path forward.

Q: You are now heavily involved in art in public spaces. What does art do? Why is it so important?

Art is transformative. In healthcare it creates moments, pauses, places, for contemplation, calm, play and interaction – it generates opportunities for conversation and sharing and connection. It’s used as a strategy for landmarking places, helps people orient in big and confusing environments and helps people feel calm. 

"Holland Bloorview has the Spiral Garden – which is effectively like a summer camp where kids of all abilities from the hospital and neighboring communities can do art."

It can also be therapeutic. For example, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital first established their Spiral Garden integrating art, garden and play in 1984. It has grown over the years into a vibrant creative arts program. This program consists of professional artists as staff, guiding kids and families in creating artwork, all very much embedded in the therapeutic journey.

Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, views of the Research MRI Suite and the Bloorview School.

The program inspired us and the whole design team in designing the new facility opened in 2006 – as well as through various renovations since – to commission artists to develop meaningful, site-specific installations. Many of the artworks were created collaboratively with kids and families.

More recently, this kind of partnering with artists lead to the completion of an installation titled Milky Way by local artist Dennis Lin for West Park Healthcare Centre. Made using material from the hospital’s prosthetics and orthotics department and the site, as well as from Lin’s vast collection of gathered materials and objects, the mobile welcomes visitors in the lobby bringing a sense of fun, whimsy and hope to all who enter.

West Park Healthcare Centre's Milky Way mobile, installation by Dennis Lin

Q: What are the challenges in establishing these art programs?

Well, despite how important it can be, it’s often not funded. It’s easy to make a business case for HVAC, engineering, and construction, but art becomes more of an “abstract” argument, despite how critical it is. We have found that it’s important to have a champion on the client side, a person who can commit and fight for a percentage of the project build budget to be dedicated to art.

Again, for example, Holland Bloorview has the Spiral Garden – which is effectively like a summer camp where kids of all abilities from the hospital and neighboring communities can do art, puppetry, theatre, music, gardening and simply play. The program was “scary” for management at first. There were concerns about the messiness of play, the lack of control. It’s antithetical to science – art is about letting go. But the hospital embraced the power and magic of the Spiral Garden, and it’s been delighting kids for 40 years.

Spiral Garden campers 2023, Holland Bloorview.

Q: What would you like the future of art in healthcare to look like?

I want it to be collaborative, a shared exchange of ideas. I want it embedded as an organizational commitment, a process within healthcare environments, something that is ongoing and iterative and isn’t just about creating one piece. I want there to be an artist in residence who is constantly making art with patients, staff and family input. I would like to tap into new technologies like virtual reality and digital art – working at the edge of technology, to help people with disabilities, and really power them up. Having an in-house art studio gives the patient self-expression and access to themselves in a way that they may not have been able to tap into, because of physical and intellectual challenges.

"I want there to be an artist in residence who is constantly making art with patients, staff and family input."

I also imagine a time when we’ll see arts institutions, arts education programs, community organizations, and the corporate sector expand their visions and mandates to “adopt” and partner with health care facilities to loan works, curate exhibitions. I imagine a time when all levels of government understand, value and fund the integration of the arts and related research in health care – visual, performing and multi-disciplinary. A time when arts and the cultural sector more broadly are valued as an essential part of a thriving, healthy society and life.

Hearts2Art collaborative art session at West Park Healthcare Centre.

Collaborative work during creation of the Lovely Bugs installation at Grandview Kids Children’s Treatment Centre.

Installation of Lovely Bugs at Grandview Kids.

Q: Why is this important to you? What do you care about most?

I care about making sure people in hospitals stay connected to others and feel hope. To see progress in healing, health and well-being and rehabilitation in concrete ways. I care about helping a patient simply experience moments of wonder, joy and happiness—because that’s what art can do.

One Kids Place, North Bay Ontario .

I care about helping a patient simply experience moments of wonder, joy and happiness—because that’s what art can do."

Anne Carlyle

RCA, ARIDO Fellow, IDC, LEED AP
Principal, Carlyle Design Associates

Anne Carlyle is an award-winning interior designer with more than 40 years experience in the planning and design of healthcare and other public environments. Anne is known for her work in facilities for children, community organizations and those with special needs.