Art-Based Research Community (ARC) Webinar Series

Session 3: Art and Dialogue

Speakers: Marjolein Heerings & Nina Goedegebure

Date: March 5 2026

Time: 3-5pm

Online (zoom)

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What happens when art opens the space for transformative conversations in healthcare?

In this session, we explore artistic interventions that make the unspeakable speakable and the invisible discussable. Drawing on examples from theatre, visual art, and participatory installations, we’ll examine how art can mediate dialogue between patients, professionals, and publics. Together, we’ll reflect on facilitation, safety, and power: when does art invite conversation, and when might it also disrupt, unsettle, or resist closure? How to document and share the knowledge that arises from these intimate dialogical practices in a way that respects the privacy of the participants?

During the ARC Get Together, artist Nina Goedegebure will briefly introduce her hybrid artistic practice and the project Will You Carry Me?!, followed by an invitation to give form to a personal experience of illness, care, or treatment. We will reflect together on what these images can teach us about how we care for ourselves and for others but also how we can transforms them into research and art. 

Assistent Professor Marjolijn Heerings will introduce the 'Ask Us!'-method. Reflection on experiences of clients and family members can be a powerful tool for improving quality in long term care settings. In the ‘Ask Us!’ method,  videos of theatrical monologues based on ethnographic research with people with intellectual disabilities; older adults with dementia and people with acquired brain injury foster such reflections. In this workshop Marjolijn will reflect on the translations made during the development of these video’s and the tensions therein. Together we will think about how we can think of the quality of these types of projects through analysing the translations made in the process of combining research and art.

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‍Nina Goedegebure

As an artist, researcher and designer, my practice moves at the intersection of art, illness and (health) care. Artistic imagination is my source of knowledge. By slowing down, listening deeply, and materializing stories through artistic methods I make visible the aesthetic, ethical, and human dimensions of care.

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Marjolijn Heerings

Marjolijn Heerings is assistant professor at the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management. She leads several research projects on how narrative methods, in which reflection on experiences takes central stage, can enhance quality improvements in long term care. She developed the ‘Ask Us!’ method and collaborated with Theater Babel Rotterdam to develop over 100 filmed theatrical monologues based on ethnografphic research that convey experiences of clients, next of kin and professionals in long term care. See www.alsjehetonsvraagtdan.nl (video database will be added around may 2026).