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Art of Living

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Documentary series revealing how engagement with art has transformed people's lives.

Art of Living: Knife Imitates Art - How Surgeons Use Creativity

Knife Imitates Art - How Surgeons Use Creativity

BBC Radio 4 - Art of Living, Knife Imitates Art - How Surgeons Use Creativity

Top surgeons reveal parallel lives as sculptors and musicians.

A fascinating study of surgeons working in Belfast and Bristol who believe their work as artists brings huge benefits to the operating theatre and a better outcome for patients.

Peter Curran presents a fascinating study of surgeons working in Belfast and Bristol who demonstrate the benefits of their work as musicians, songwriters and sculptors, and what that brings to the Operating Theatre.

Each offer a contrasting take on what music means to their lives; improving empathy, technique or just total immersion in a creative place that balances the life and death issues and responsibilities they face in their professional world.  

In Belfast, the link between good surgeons and creativity is illustrated by the international prize-winning surgeon and Clinical Teaching Fellow at Queen's University, Ian Walsh. 

Consultant surgeons Aidan Armstrong, Stephen White and Robert Cuthbert talk about the contrasting emotions of performing surgery and playing classical music concerts.   

We visit the Bristol studio of Lisa Sacks, a South African plastic and reconstructive surgeon whose clinical career began in Soweto - but from the age of 13 she's been making sculptures of heads, bodies and hands. Her bronze portrait bust of Averil Mansfield, Britain’s first female Professor of Surgery is currently on display at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.


Produced by Peter Curran. A Foghorn production for BBC Radio 4

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