Helene Hugel, Helium Arts – Winner of FTI WMB Female Entrepreneur Award 2024
25th November 2024
This week we hear from Helene Hugel, Founder & CEO, Helium Arts who was recipient of this year’s FTI WMB Female Entrepreneur Award.
Originally from New York, Helene has lived in Ireland for almost 30 years. She grew up in a family of carers, with her father a psychiatrist, her mother a social worker and her sister a nurse.
Q: What is the nature of your business, Helium Arts?
I am the CEO and Founder of Helium Arts and responsible for the senior management of the charity alongside two other members of the senior management team and our Board of Directors. As well as management I am responsible for the artistic direction of Helium Arts and how our innovative arts and health model extends to reach and impact more children and young people living with illness across Ireland
Founded in 2010, Helium Arts is a children’s charity committed to improving the well-being of children and young people living with lifelong physical health conditions.
Life can be tough and lonely for a child with a condition but through our free creative workshops in hospitals, communities and online, we provide safe spaces where children come together, forge friendships, have fun, and discover new skills.
We use creativity to help children and young people feel more confident and resilient, empowering them with the necessary tools to overcome adversity.
Our work is also proven to support families and help them be more resilient. Last year in 2023 we reached 3,000 children across Ireland, now in 2024 we are set to reach nearly 5,000.
Q: As Founder and CEO, can you give our readers an insight into your background and role?
Originally from upstate New York, I studied at Trinity and was living in Ireland. I had already co-founded the award-winning Púca Puppet Theatre Company.
I wanted a more socially engaged arts practice – one that made a difference.
I began working as an arts practitioner developing arts and health workshops and children’s performances for children between 2002 and 2008. In addition, my alter ego, Dr. Sock, worked as a Clown Doctor spreading joy and mischief with the Arts Care Clown Doctors in Northern Ireland for five years.
During this time, I was awarded multiple Arts Council grants and bursaries to develop my practice working with children in hospitals – at a time when the concept of arts and health was still in its infancy.
I come from a background of carers; there are doctors and nurses and social workers all in my family, along with a few creatives as well. I guess it just appeals to me, the whole idea of art for wellbeing and for healing.
In 2010 I founded Helium Arts with backing from SEI, to provide a structure for collaborating with other artists and healthcare practitioners in order to extend the impact of arts and health practice to more children and young people living with illness across Ireland.
Q: What is the link between the arts and health?
The literature demonstrates the valuable role of arts participation in addressing the psychosocial, health and wellbeing needs of children, individuals and communities. Research from the World Health Organisation focused on a scoping review of evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and wellbeing and found that arts have the potential to impact and benefit both mental and physical health and wellbeing.[1]
Arts trigger psychological, physiological, social and behavioural responses which are linked with positive health outcomes.
As a result of these responses, two main categories of impact for health are identifiable; prevention and promotion, and management and treatment.
On children’s diagnosis of illness or chronic conditions, the primary focus tends to be on physical health. Whilst caring for children’s physical needs is essential, literature argues that without access to creative self-expression, children may not have the tools to develop problem-solving skills or to create healthy emotional responses. It is suggested that nurturing creativity through arts can enhance the coping skills that are necessary in difficult and stressful times.[2]/[3] Similarly, arts engagement has been found to lead to higher levels of self-esteem[4] and to lower the risk of social and behavioural maladjustment in children entering adolescence.
In terms of the use of the arts for children with long-term health conditions specifically, the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing’s Inquiry Report[5] found that an improved environment, such as that produced by engagement with the arts, can help to redress the balance of life chances for children with lifelong physical health conditions.
At all ages, it was found that the arts can have a beneficial part to play in the recovery from illness and the management of lifelong physical health conditions.
This report contained three key messages:
1.The arts can help keep us well, aid our recovery and support longer lives better lived.
2.The arts can help meet major challenges facing health and social care such as ageing, lifelong physical health conditions, loneliness, and mental health.
3.The arts can help save money in the health service and for social care.
Q: You have secured multi-annual funders which allows you to plan ahead. How difficult is it to secure this kind of funding?
Relying on project-to-project funding, year-to-year, can only sustain you so far.
Multi-annual funding is becoming more and more available as philanthropists, corporates, and grant making bodies realise its value. Not only does it help not for profits and social enterprises plan for the longer term, which enables them to make the larger societal changes they seek to make, but it is more cost-efficient for all involved.
The key to success for anyone seeking this funding is to be prepared and ready for it, and don’t accept anything less.
Being prepared for it means having a robust 5-year strategy and plans which show how multi-annual funding will make a difference. Having a track record of growth over a period of time, also helps build the case.
Q: Would you say that you are an ‘accidental’ entrepreneur or was the move from artist to entrepreneur more deliberate and planned?
I would say accidental, and yet I have dabbled in entrepreneurship since I was a kid, always running mini businesses. It started by helping my Mum run her cottage Organic Farm business when I was only small, by helping to collect and pack chicken eggs. My family ran a local tourist attraction in upstate NY and my mum introduced me to the idea of starting a gift shop when I was 12 years old.
Throughout my teens, I grew it from a few shelves of items to needing its own small cabin by the time I was heading off to college. While in college I was very involved with the Trinity Arts Workshop, where I helped to grow the college society from 2 art classes to about 10,
Here I became very involved with the Dublin arts community and met my arts and business partner Niamh Lawlor and we set up Puca Puppet Theatre Company for about 5 years.
I still would say that the entrepreneurship side was accidental in that I didn’t study business or set a goal to start a company. It is just that this was the vehicle to enable me to realise my passions and values, and be able to earn a living doing the work I loved to do and really believed in.
Q: Recently you were presented with the FTI WMB Female Entrepreneur Award 2024. How did you feel about receiving this recognition?
It was an amazing accolade! Particularly as we are a not for profit competing with for profit businesses. I am so proud, I have to say. I am 50 now having been running Helium Arts for 14 years, and it really felt like a great recognition for the past many years work.
Q: How do you balance the responsibility as an employer with your passion as a social entrepreneur with a creative slant?
Good question, I am usually a yes person and want to do it all! However, I have learned that not everyone operates at the same speed, and that moving more slowly and being reflective is important to maintain quality in the organisation.
We were very deliberate with our current 5-year strategy that it would be ambitious but measured, gave us a stretch but is achievable in the time frame.
It is about balance, and for me it is about really listening to staff, being in tune with what I am hearing, managing people regularly and providing space for dialogue and feedback regularly.
Q: What are the biggest challenges facing your sector?
•A skilled workforce – finding artists who are willing to work in this sensitive environment as part of their arts practice, and who have the skills in the area of inclusion.
•The need for more multi-annual funding – to remove some of the ongoing financial risks that all charities face most of the time.
•The broader recognition that the arts supports wellbeing – it has a value that needs to be invested in.
Q: And the opportunities?
•The move to care in the community regarding Health policy
•The sea change to build inclusive societies in Ireland
Looking to the future, we plan to extend the remit of Helium Arts to provide in-person activities in eight hospitals and 16 locations across the country, reaching 6,000 children by 2027. Our goals are looking towards reaching not just children in hospital, but also children from disadvantaged backgrounds, migrants and refugees, along with expansion of the online programme so it is accessible to all children.
We can’t be everything for everybody. And there’s such a high need out there for children in general who are marginalised or vulnerable.
We’ve had to clearly draw a line around the children that we work with and be really clear about that in our communication, so that we don’t create expectations that we’re providing our creative service for all children, because we’d be overwhelmed.
Q: What does Diversity, Equity & Inclusion mean to you?
Ultimately it means Belonging.
I also feel that there is a lot of fear and worry in regard to including children with additional needs. We all have needs, and wouldn’t the world be a different place if we were all willing to learn how to meet each person ‘where they are at’ in a non-judgemental way, and learn how to tune into how to connect with each person individually and then collectively.
Q: How do you maintain a healthy perspective given your workload?
My family comes first. When I had my two girls in my 40’s my long work days had to come to an end. Having kids forced me to prioritise my workload, and I have never gone back to regular long working days, and funny enough my work has become more efficient and effective and impactful.
Q: What advice would you offer your younger self just starting out?
It is hard work but always worth it. Make sure to take time for yourself, and don’t forget about family and friends!
Q: What legacy would you like to leave behind?
Helium Arts as a sustainable organisation, with a thriving culture, and continued impact, recognised and embedded into the health and social care services.
The lighter side of ‘you’
If you were a superhero who would you be?
Wonderwoman – I used to dress up as her all the time as a kid,
Alternative career choice, no limits?
An arial dancer / trapeze artist
Name three things you’re passionate about (e.g. sustainability; great wine; world domination).
Nature (environment)
Kindness
A great meal (with great wine!).
[1] Fancourt D, Finn S. (2019) What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; (Health Evidence Network (HEN) synthesis report 67). [Online] Available at: https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/329834
[2] Reed, K., Kennedy, H. and Wamboldt, M. Z. (2015) ‘Art for Life: A community arts mentorship program for chronically ill children’, Arts & Health, 7(1): 14-26.
[3] Rosenblum, M. (2019) Health Benefits of Creativity for Kids with Chronic Illnesses. Available online at: https://coachart.org/blog/health-benefits-of-creativity-for-kids-with-chronic-illnesses/
[4] Mak, H.W. & Fancourt, D. (2019) ‘Arts engagement and self-esteem in children: results from a propensity score matching analysis.’ Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1449(1): 36-45.
[5] UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (2017) Creative health: The arts for health and wellbeing. All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing.
