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Singende Krankenhäuser e.V. is an international network dedicated to establishing health-promoting singing practices in hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, and healthcare centers. Since its founding in 2009, the organization has initiated and supported numerous projects and pilot programs in acute care and rehabilitation clinics both nationally and internationally. The focus is not on musical performance, but on the shared experience of breath, sound, and connection. Singing is understood as a universal resource through which people can strengthen their self-awareness and sense of self-efficacy. The programs can be integrated into medical and therapeutic treatment or offered as voluntary complementary activities, encouraging patients to develop self-competencies in the space between leisure and therapy.

As part of the congress “The Healing Arts – Forging Alliances of Arts & Medicine”, the workshop demonstrates how such alliances can take shape in practice. Participants will experience easy-to-learn songs, canons, and chants combined with gentle breathing, body-awareness, and sensory exercises. Short inputs from research and practice (see also panel session) will illustrate how group singing can help regulate stress, deepen breathing, foster social connection, and thereby support both physical and emotional well-being. At the same time, the workshop highlights how singing-based interventions can be integrated into everyday clinical settings in low-threshold ways – for example directly on hospital wards or as interprofessional team formats. Patient examples will further illustrate the impact, opportunities, and limitations of such approaches in different settings.

The workshop invites participants to draw on their own singing experience and develop ideas for collaboration between the arts, nursing, medicine, and therapy. In this way, it offers a practical exploration of how singing can serve as a simple, low-cost, and joyful health-promoting resource in the spirit of the “Healing Arts.”