Collaborative practice is not a separate strand of the work — it is where much of the most urgent thinking happens.
Over fifteen years, O'Connell has worked with hospitals, museums, research institutions, and community organisations to develop projects where art and lived experience meet. These are not outreach programmes or add-ons. They are substantive collaborations — co-developed with clinicians, researchers, and participants — that have generated new knowledge, shifted institutional practice, and produced work that has been exhibited, published, and awarded.
He brings to each project a dual perspective: that of an artist with an international exhibition career, and a clinical practitioner in training. This combination — conceptual rigour alongside therapeutic understanding — is what makes the work distinctive.
2024
Alzheimer's Society
UCL
Central Saint Martins
A research and creative collaboration focused on improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in dementia services for individuals from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Paintings were created using natural materials — turmeric, hibiscus — whose colours and scents sparked conversations, memories, and personal reflection among participants. Art was used as both a research tool and a means of engagement, creating spaces where participants could articulate experiences that clinical frameworks often fail to capture.
View project2019 – 2020
UCL
Central Saint Martins
English National Ballet
Parkinson's UK
Wellcome Trust
A creative collaboration between individuals living with Parkinson's Disease, Central Saint Martins, English National Ballet, and UCL, exploring how creative practice can dispel misconceptions and communicate real insights into the experience of Parkinson's. Workshops spanning textiles, dance, and art led participants to create visual diaries and a shared vocabulary of lived experience — strength, resilience, fear, hope, humour — translated into large textile banners and co-designed patterns. Funded by the UCL Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund.
View project2022 – 2023
UCL
Central Saint Martins
Parkinson's UK
Wellcome Trust
PoP-PD explored the fears and concerns associated with discussing dementia within the Parkinson's community — a topic often avoided by both patients and healthcare professionals. Through creative workshops at Central Saint Martins, participants explored their associations with Parkinson's dementia and co-produced two information booklets with lived experts and healthcare professionals across the UK. The project generated published research and was awarded the Parkinson's UK Excellence Network Award 2023 and the Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Award 2022.
View project2022
Arts 4 Dementia
Science Museum
Wellcome Trust
Over six weeks, in collaboration with the Science Museum, O'Connell selected objects from the Wellcome Trust Medicine Gallery as starting points for creative exploration. Guided by expert curators, participants living with dementia created artworks in response — objects chosen deliberately to provoke reflection on identity, encouraging personal and collective storytelling through making. The project used object-based learning and mark-making to open new channels of expression for participants for whom conventional verbal communication had become limited.
View project2019 – 2022
English National Ballet
Dancing with Parkinson's
A creative workshop led with English National Ballet's Dancing with Parkinson's group and ENB's musical and choreographic team. Participants designed and cut shapes to create visual musical scores — which music directors then interpreted and responded to, which in turn influenced the dancers in generating choreography. A sustained collaboration that brought together participants living with Parkinson's, professional musicians, and dancers in a process of genuine co-creation. This body of work led directly to the solo exhibition Perceptions of Ted at Cubitt Square, London, 2022.
View projectIf you are developing a project where this kind of collaboration might be relevant, get in touch.
O'Connell works with healthcare organisations, museums, universities, and arts institutions. He is particularly interested in projects at the intersection of clinical practice, research, and visual art — where the work is genuinely co-produced rather than delivered.
ruairiadhoconnell@gmail.com