Approach
Therapeutic settings in care environments
Paint a Smile paints colored frescoes in healthcare facilities, helping transform the environments into places of life. The painted characters and their surroundings, researched and custom made, open windows to the imagination and the outside world.
Paint a Smile’s techniques and skills have already been applied to 215 projects in 18 countries. Its method is constantly evolving thanks to the tight dialogue between medical staff, patients, families and the artists it mandates.
Artists
Teamwork for the medical cause
All professional artists are commissioned and paid by the Foundation. Designers, colorists, graphic designers and painters work in teams under the responsibility of a project manager. They develop each project in collaboration with the medical, educational and administrative teams. Specific needs of patients according to their pathologies, ages and cultures are thus met.
Decorations applied to the medical cause
Paint a Smile Foundation optimizes stays in medical environments thanks to its frescoes and color installations. Its expertise benefits:
Children and teenagers in hospital: walls and ceilings become the medium for fun and poetic stories, conducive to laughter and mental escape from the medical surroundings.
Children victim of violence and/or abuse: designed specifically for the UAPED (children in danger units), these decors reassure and encourage the release of speech.
Our elders in nursing homes: the visual stories support time-space loss, stimulate sense-memory and invite dialogue while brightening daily life.
A typical project
The 5 stages of a project
step 1
Identification
The director and project manager study each application. A presentation file is put together to seek the necessary funding.
A typical project
The 5 stages of a project
step 2
Funding
The applicant institution and/or Paint a Smile approach corporations, partners, sponsors and potential donors.
A typical project
The 5 stages of a project
step 3
Design concept
The medical and nursing teams define the themes in consultation with the artists.
A typical project
The 5 stages of a project
step 4
Directives
The artists implement hygiene and intervention protocols based on the type of structure.
A typical project
The 5 stages of a project
step 5
Inauguration
It can be organized in the presence of the artists, hospital officials, medical teams and media to thank the donor(s).
Our projects
Here is a selection of projects that have been executed in different countries around the world.
Belgium – St Peter University Hospital, Brussels
France – Margency Hospital, Margency
France – Necker-Enfants malades Hospital, Paris
Germany – Pediatrics and Neonatology, Kiel
Switzerland – San Giovanni e Valli Regional Hospital, Bellinzona
Switzerland – Outpatient psychiatric unit (CHUV), Orbe
Switzerland – Geneva University Hospital, Geneva
Tahiti – French Polynesia Hospital, Papeete
Switzerland – Loëx Hospital, Bernex
Switzerland – Val-Fleury, Geneva
Switzerland – La Cassagne, Lausanne
Switzerland – Clair Bois-Minoteries, Geneva
Switzerland – L’Orée, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne
France – Mobile Hospital Unit, SMUR Robert-Debré, Paris
France – Pediatric Reception Units for Children in Danger (UAPED), Beauvais
Switzerland – Belle-Idée Psycho-Geriatric Service (HUG), Geneva
Switzerland – Star Ambulances, Lausanne
Belgium – St Peter University Hospital, Brussels
The St Pierre University Hospital offers high-quality care accessible to all, regardless of origin, philosophical or religious beliefs, gender or sexuality, or social condition of patients. Paint a Smile transformed the entire pediatric inpatient ward and the 609 area for children in distress.
France – Margency Hospital, Margency
The French Red Cross manages the Follow-up Care and Rehabilitation Department of Margency Hospital. Its 106 beds welcome children from a few weeks to 17 years old. Specialized medical staff cares for young patients from the pediatric departments of hospitals and Cancer Centers of the Ile de France in highly medicalized follow-up care. They continue their treatment there before returning to their families.
France – Necker-Enfants malades Hospital, Paris
Since 2004, 13 projects have been completed within Necker: neurosurgery, reception service for parents, visceral surgery, pneumo-dermatology, neuro-metabolism, cardiology (hospitalization, consultations, and resuscitation), ENT and hospitalization. The photos show our therapeutic decorations in the Developmental diseases clinic, the Oral surgery unit and the Cardiology resuscitation unit.
Germany – Pediatrics and Neonatology, Kiel
The pediatric inpatient department benefits from adapted custom-made decors by Paint a Smile, which take young patients on an interactive, educational and humorous world tour.
Kiel Hospital’s Neonatology Unit welcomes almost 2000 newborn babies per year. The soft and benevolent colors now surrounding them are very soothing for such intense moments.
Switzerland – San Giovanni e Valli Regional Hospital, Bellinzona
Pediatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the psycho-neuro-somatic development of children, as well as the diagnosis and treatment of childhood and pediatric diseases, both acute and chronic. Paint a Smile has transformed this entire medical environment, surrounding the children from their arrival and throughout their care journey.
Switzerland – Outpatient psychiatric unit (CHUV), Orbe
The Orbe Outpatient Clinic welcomes children and adolescents who suffer from psychological difficulties, as well as their parents. No detail is left to chance by Paint a Smile’s artists. The approach is studied beforehand with the medical profession and the graphic project validated between all those involved before implementation.
Switzerland – Geneva University Hospital, Geneva
The plaster-cast department of Geneva’s Children Hospital takes care of more than 5,000 young patients yearly. To improve their comfort and care, its entire plaster sector was renovated in 2021. It now boasts two treatment rooms and a room dedicated to hypnosis for children during consultation. Decorated by Paint a Smile Foundation, these new spaces feature bright tones for a serene and warm atmosphere. These soothing environments reduce stress and help soothe pain.
Tahiti – French Polynesia Hospital,Papeete
Located in Pirae, the CHPF is a state-of-the-art hospital with a heavy technical platform, emergency medical service and emergency reception, 11 operating rooms, heavy intensive care, imaging platform including CT, MRI and scintigraphy, etc. It provides high-tech care in surgery, medicine, obstetrics and psychiatry. Paint a Smile has brought colour, support, humour and a lot of joy to everyone, medical teams, parents and young patients in the pediatric department.
Switzerland – Loëx Hospital, Bernex
The Loëx Hospital (HUG) offers geriatric rehabilitation care as well as accommodation with adapted care for people waiting for a new place to live (maintenance care). A multidisciplinary team, made up of a dozen different professions, brings together their skills to offer a care program adapted to the needs of each hospitalized person to help them regain or maintain maximum daily autonomy.
Paint a Smile supports this sometimes difficult daily life.
Switzerland – Val-Fleury, Geneva
Val Fleuri is a medico-social establishment, a living space on a human scale where everything is done to allow residents to maintain the autonomy and privacy they need, while respecting their rights, choices and beliefs.
Paint a Smile has added soft colorful scenery for sense memory stimulation to accompany patients daily.
Switzerland – La Cassagne, Lausanne
La Cassagne is a specialized school whose students overcome their daily situations related to physical disability (cerebral palsy, sequelae of craniocerebral trauma, spina bifida, neuromuscular diseases, and other progressive diseases.
Paint a Smile worked with the nursing and teaching staff to develop a journey of colours and everyday scenes according to the spaces and their functions.
Switzerland – Clair Bois-Minoteries, Geneva
The Clair Bois Foundation provides support adapted to children, teenagers and adults with multiple disabilities. The specific request of a teenager to benefit from a tailor-made décor by Paint a Smile was realized. Passionate about the savannah, he is now more than delighted.
Switzerland – L’Orée, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne
The École de pédagogie spéciale de l’Orée (Fondation Delafontaine) is proud to have an original and unique creation by the artists of Paint a Smile, whose sensitive and delicate dimensions are immense. The decorations set the scene for the world and allow each child and young person to dream of themselves on the edge of a forest or by a pond… and to live in a space larger than the one that hosts them. The strength of this approach is to support the students’ imagination in daily appointments. The pedagogical team participates in this by taking part in a narrative that matches the tones of the décor.
Make no mistake, dreaming is a very serious matter !
France – Mobile Hospital Unit, SMUR Robert-Debré, Paris
1200 yearly transports in ” the most beautiful truck in the world ! “. The paramedics were interested in the impact of Paint a Smile’s therapeutic decorations on the young patients and their families: improvement of “pain and anxiety” care, support for exchanges between parents and medical staff, letting go, reassuring and comforting atmosphere.
” I want the same in my bedroom ! ” says it all.
France – Pediatric Reception Units for Children in Danger (UAPED), Beauvais
“In 2019, a partnership between the Paint a Smile Foundation and the Federation La Voix De l’Enfant was born: decorating and bringing colors to the Pediatric Reception Units for Children in Danger (UAPED) so that they become more welcoming and warm places. Thanks to the talent of the Paint a Smile Foundation artists, the 1st fresco was created at the UAPED in Beauvais (AMIV – Reception of Child Victims). La Voix De l’Enfant and Paint a Smile intend to deploy this project in all of France’s UAPEDs so that the walls of these listening places are more pleasant, and that these Reception Units offer an even more adapted and protective environment for child victims.”
Switzerland – Belle-Idée, Mental Developmental Psychiatry Unit (HUG), Geneva
The “Pavillon des Lilas” welcomes adults with serious pathologies. This unique tactile project was developed in collaboration between Dr. Galli-Carminati, then director of the Unit, and designer Philippe Cramer. Each piece of the creation, with its specific shape, color, temperature and texture, encourages patients to express themselves through tactile and sensory stimulation.
Switzerland – Star Ambulances, Lausanne
This vehicle dedicated to neonatology is available to the CHUV for the transport of newborns. The babies are transported using an incubator equipped with various breathing apparatuses, all mounted on a stretcher. Care is provided by the staff of the neonatal ward of the CHUV.
Paint a Smile’s work allows parents to better cope with stress and de-dramatize this often-traumatic experience.
