The HIVE

Maridulu Budyari Gumal is an academic health science partnership that represents the Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE). Its purpose is to change the future of healthcare through bringing together fourteen thought-leading organisations, each with specialist healthcare knowledge and a heritage of game-changing initiatives to their name.

SPHERE acknowledges the importance of including a Knowledge Translation platform committed to enhancing capacity and raising the profile of the brilliant efforts of each of its Clinical Academic Group.

The HIVE is an immersive art installation co-created by the SPHERE Knowledge Translation Strategic Platform team, artists-in-residence, members of Clinical Academic Groups consumers of health services and carers.

Simone Chua, an installation artist and industrial designer, worked with the Knowledge Translation team to transform the vision of SPHERE into an immersive art installation. The HIVE represents the spirit of collaborating to improve healthcare and enhance health.

Simone Chua, Barbara Doran, and Caitlin Gibson took the reigns as ‘uber’ curators when the HIVE was in its infancy, inviting other outstanding artists to join forces as SPHERE artists-in-residence.

Together, they have created a body of work that aims to provide information about the work of SPHERE in a way that engages the public imagination, highlights qualities of accessibility, inclusion, audience engagement, and socio-political commitment.

An iterative process

SPHERE artists-in-residence collaborated with academics, health professionals, consumers of health services, and carers who were associated with eight exemplary SPHERE initiatives. Together, they explored how art can be used to communicate complex community and social issues, such as the wellbeing of children from refugee backgrounds, healthy urban environments, palliative care, and mental health and addiction.

Each project featured in the HIVE draws on different art forms – from textiles and sculpture, to poetry and video – highlighting the many ways that the arts can enrich conversations on health(care) and how research can be communicated using visual, performative and literary means.

About Knowledge Translation

Knowledge Translation is both a multidimensional concept and an emerging discipline that examines methods and mechanisms to close the chasm between what we know and what we do. It is a dynamic and an iterative process that involves the creation, synthesis, dissemination, exchange, and ethically-sound use of knowledge to improve healthcare and, relatedly, health.

Towards this aim, it develops the INFRASTRUCTURE required to ENABLE individuals and collectives to EXCHANGE knowledge to give rise to EVIDENCE INFORMING KNOWLEDGE and PRACTICE. This involves (but is not limited to) the use of innovative arts-based Knowledge Translation strategies to communicate knowledge within and beyond SPHERE.

SPHERE Knowledge Translation Team

  • Katherine Boydell, Director of SPHERE Knowledge Translation, Professor of Mental Health, Black Dog Institute
  • Ann Dadich, Deputy Director of SPHERE Knowledge Translation, Associate Professor, Western Sydney University
  • Zoi Triandafilidis, Project Officer, Black Dog Institute
  • Chloe Watfern, Research Assistant, Black Dog Institute

Artists-in-Residence

  • Simone Chua
  • Barbara Doran
  • Caitlin Gibson
  • Lucy Klippan
  • Michele Elliot
  • Anton Pulvirenti
  • Peter Maple
  • Paul Wallace
  • Kate Disher-Quill.

Images of The Hive team courtesy of SPHERE Knowledge Translation. Guest post by Professor Katherine Boydell. Learn more about Maridulu Budyari Gumal.