Art enters places of suffering to create “Healing spaces”

50 years ago a collective improvisation of patients and artists contributed to the fall of the wall of the psychiatric hospital of Trieste, that separated the “insane” from the false ideals of a society composed only of the “sane”.

Today the international happening Healing Spaces reminds us that in 1971 for the first time in the world patient’s discharged from the asylum of Perugia were offered a complete network of services throughout the Umbrian territory.

At last the madness of the incarceration of those suffering was substituted by a humane treatment that would take place within the patient’s social context.

From 28.8 to 5.9.2021 artists, patients, families, nurses and therapists from the world over, will meet in Perugia for an happening where all will continue this “work without authors” to eliminate the walls, both external and internal, that marginalize the psychological pain inside the existential peripheries.

To share psychological suffering and the creativity of healing with the heart of a city and its citizens is one of the essential steps to treat a disease which affects social relations and can be defeated only by the therapeutic force of interpersonal relationships.