Healing through Art in Uruguay: An Intern's Experience

On a hot summer Tuesday in Montevideo, Uruguay, I walked down the fluorescent–lit hallways of the Hospital Pereira Rossell, past people waiting in rows of metallic seats. The constant low hum of conversation hung in the air.

One could hardly imagine the scene that was about to take place — some 40 or so people singing and skipping in a giant conga line. People danced up and down the extent of the hospital wing led by a clown dressed head to toe in mismatching patterns and bright colors.  Music blasted in the background and a toddler played with a huge hand balloon made from an inflated rubber glove. Nurses and young kids twirled each other to the beat of a popular Latin pop song. The group of volunteers, hospital workers and patients of all ages joined together for a brief spurt of dancing and laughing in the sterile and often serious hospital environment. This event is one of the many interventions that the Foundation SaludArte organizes in and around Montevideo.
SaludArte is a non-profit foundation that aims to promote health through art and humor. They seek to strengthen integral human development, spontaneity, creativity and participation. They search for alternative solutions to personal, relational and social problems. For SaludArte founder, director, psychologist and artist, Rasia Friedler, health is a physical, mental and social state of well-being that transcends the mere absence of infirmity.

They host activities within four areas: health, education, community and culture. These include artistic interventions in hospitals, programs for prevention and promotion of health in educative and community environments, as well as theatrical and psycho-dramatic workshops for healthcare providers and educators.

The methods they use range from the very simple, such as bringing dance and laughter to a hospital wing, to the more complicated. In Playback Theatre, an audience member provides a scenario or narrative from his or her own life, usually pertaining to a given theme. The artistic team then acts out a scene based on what the audience member had shared. In many cases, the audience members are invited to also participate in the dramatic interpretation. SaludArte uses Playback Theatre to address things like the problem of bullying in elementary schools, or the stress and difficulty that comes with working as a healthcare-giver. Still, all of their activities, no matter how heavy the topic, manage to shed light on the joyous, the silly and the humorous in life.

SaludArte pioneered the program of hospital art in Uruguay, which it has been implementing in the country’s hospitals for over 15 years.  It has received local and international recognition for the quality, effectiveness and ethics of its operation.
SaludArte is made up of about 50 people, including a network of volunteer artists, art-therapists, students and professionals in health, education and other areas, as well as a dedicated theatrical team and administrative staff.  Across all of the various programs and events, the foundation works with several thousand community members every year.
Over the past several years, SaludArte has welcomed four student interns from the Middlebury study abroad program in Montevideo.  Interns are immediately incorporated into the small tight-knit group of dedicated staff that makes the foundation run.

As a foreign student, it is a distinctly special experience to have the opportunity to work with an organization that is so intrinsically based in building a strong sense of community.

Nathan Siegel, who studied abroad in Montevideo during the Fall 2013 semester, and who researched the role of creative education in the Uruguayan school system, spoke positively of his experience interning at SaludArte.
“There are so many schools, hospitals, youth centers and clinics that I went to that I never would have gone to or even known about otherwise,” he said. “It gave me a way to learn about the country outside of the university and my great host family experience.”

SaludArte aims to work with people and communities to foster and develop their own capacity to care, manage and transform. The foundation brings active and purposeful expressions of joy to unconventional places. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be an intern for SaludArte this summer.