The Rafael Institute and the Palace of Versailles
Since 2020, the Palace of Versailles has allowed art therapists to conduct workshops with their patients within the museum. In 2022, the Château entered into a first partnership with the Rafaël Institute, allowing more than 100 patients to benefit from workshops and dramatherapy and therapeutic singing sessions in the various spaces of the Château. This agreement also allowed patients of the Rafaël Institute to participate in cultural events and activity programs offered by the Palace of Versailles, such as the Pentathlon of the Arts.
The success of this first partnership led to the development of a new program aimed at jointly developing new approaches to improve the well-being and quality of life of patients through arts therapies.
This partnership aims to advance clinical outcomes and patient experience by adopting an integrative approach.
Programme 2024 :
• Continuation of the arts therapy workshops at the Château: drama therapy, song therapy and dance therapy workshops are organized at the Château for patients of the Rafaël Institute. These workshops provide spaces for expression and comfort, contributing to the physical and emotional well-being of participants.
• Research and evaluation: studies are carried out in parallel with art therapy workshops to assess their impact on patient health. In connection with her research project “Arts therapies as a contribution to the ethical culture of care”, Viviane Seron, drama therapist at the Rafaël Institute, is notably welcomed at the Château de Versailles during the summer of 2024 to deepen research on the scope of clinical arts therapies as health humanities.
• November 15, 2024, “Cultural Health” Conference: a meeting with key players will be organized at the Château around the theme “health and culture” and the contribution of arts therapies in the field of care.
The commitment of the Palace of Versailles to vulnerable populations
Aware of the essential role that cultural institutions can play in the world of museotherapy, the Château de Versailles has been committed for several years to vulnerable groups, people with disabilities and the elderly by using the museum environment for the purposes of physical, psychological and social well-being. Projects such as Stopover in Versailles organized by the Palace of Versailles and offered every two years since 2016, have notably demonstrated their benefits by promoting artistic expression among people with disabilities.
The Rafael Institute
The Rafaël Institute is the first integrative health center in Europe to offer free supportive care to people affected by cancer or a chronic illness. This humanist project created in 2018 by cancer doctors and radiotherapists, as close as possible to the needs of each individual, has set itself the mission of moving from a medicine centered on the disease to a medicine centered on the individual and their life project. Based on comprehensive and sustainable care pathways, scientific research and professional and university education, the Rafaël Institute positions itself as an innovative player in the health system.
In 5 years of existence, the Rafaël Institute has supported nearly 5,000 patients and offered more than 83,500 evaluated treatments, in a therapeutic framework that strengthens people’s autonomy and supports the values of democracy in health.
With this commitment, he questions the relationship to culture, to cultural life and what they represent in personal openness, to the life of the spirit as well as in forms of mediation in support and care. .
Arts therapies have been an integral part of treatment pathways since the opening of the Rafaël Institute and actively participate in this global reflection which links culture and health.
