Milan, 4th of October 2017. The initiative is one of a kind. For the first time, an exchange of experiences accumulated by young peers belonging to different fields of research, scientific and artistic, is concretely implemented. «Art can only benefit science and the sick person, but also vice versa. The initiative adopted, in these terms, is a game of three: artists, scientists and patients get involved. - intervenes Enzo Lucchini, President of the National Cancer Institute of Milan - The intent is to bring together worlds that apparently seem foreign and which should be interested in each other. The goal is to innovatively stimulate creativity and vital energies on the part of all three players, through an osmosis of knowledge and feeling. In addition, numerous clinical studies conducted internationally show that the negative and oppressive aura connoting the concept of tumor pathology and the state of cancer patient is not functional to the best approach to oncological disease and compresses the reality that the patient must face. We would therefore like, starting from the INT in Milan, the cradle of the search for treatment, that the initiative can give way to a positive transformation of this way of thinking, through the induced awareness that disease, pain, death as medicine, art and well-being are part of life».

«It is a partnership between two important emblems of the city of Milan that have contributed to building its history. - says Luigi Cajazzo, Director General of the National Cancer Institute of Milan - From such assumptions, such a prestigious program could only spring up, which once again underlines the importance of art in medicine, as a supporting element of the disease».

In practice, the work table is made up of five to six postgraduates from the Accademia di Brera and as many young INT doctors from the research and clinical area. In the specific case of the team from the Accademia, half attended a course in art photography and the other half a painting. The selection is underway these days: the young artists must have sensitivity and expressive capacity as their main characteristics and must be psychologically ready to face hospital life. «The goal is to obtain a virtuous contamination between young people in training in fields as diverse as they are similar in terms of sensitivity and attention to the experience of others. - says Vincenzo Mazzaferro, Director of the Surgery Department of the National Cancer Institute of Milan and Scientific Director of the project - We hope that artistic sensitivity in contact with the scientific one will generate new forms of expression and commitment that make our patients protagonists of the scene and instrument of transfiguration of reality. Illness is, in fact, just that: a condition capable of changing our life, but also an event capable of igniting hidden energies, selfless commitment and the urgency to pursue the search for solutions by all means. We hope that a new alliance will arise between those who explore the soul of those who suffer with art and those who do their utmost to seek new ways of treatment that can only do well to those who, like myself, have the task of coordinating the delicate passage from expectations to awareness ».

Four meetings between doctors and young artists will take place between November 2017 and February 2018 and will cover the different aspects of research and clinical activity. They will take place at the INT and will involve patients from the Department of Digestive System Surgery and Liver Transplantation. «This activity will produce images, sensations, exchanges on scientific and artistic knowledge and will lead to the production of a publication. - explains Stefano Pizzi, , Professor of Painting at the Accademia di Brera of Fine Arts and Artistic Manager of the project - It will be accompanied by the pictorial and photographic images elaborated by our trainees and will be made available to the public. What we want with this project is to bring citizens closer to the problem of cancer with an approach that is not catalyzed by fear, as is still the case now too frequently for those who cross the hospital threshold».

The works created will be exhibited within the INT. «We are pleased to have contributed to making this initiative come true. - Giuliano Sottoriva, President of PROMETEO ONLUS - For our Association, taking care of patients and family members also means bringing the sick and those who assist them closer to art in terms of psychological help. It is another aspect of our commitment, which integrates with what we have always done: awareness-raising activities to promote the humanization of care and a culture of welcoming the patient and his family, support for clinical research relating to liver disease and to those who have undergone a liver transplant».

Opening the hospital doors to art and, therefore, to those who want to look towards the future, means giving positive promises to those who have a disease and, consequently, live their daily lives without thinking about tomorrow. For this reason, bringing the patient closer to art has always been one of the objectives of the INT. It is already a reality, for example, inside the Hospice, where works of art donated by artists are exhibited, and in the field of Thoracic Surgery. «The art project in the ward consists of works by artists who tell and interpret the experience of the disease in a free way, with the aim of establishing a dialogue between those who are experiencing it and those who, on the other hand, have already gone through this path. - says Ugo Pastorino, Director of the Complex Structure of Thoracic Surgery of the National Cancer Institute of Milan - It is a communication that travels through emotionality and empathy and that is lived in a positive way: in our experience, in recent years, very few felt disturbed: less than one patient in a thousand».