Royal Edinburgh Hospital

At the REH Artlink have always supported the involvement of patients within creative and horticultural activity. The last couple of years we have been focused on the idea of ‘Grounds for Change’ which aims to not only provide valuable activity for the patients, but also to effect some form of physical change to their environment.

The programme responds to:

The need for activity that patients can undertake. Through a variety of workshop programmes we provide much needed activity around the hospital.

The need for patients to have non-clinical spaces within the hospital grounds. Our aim is to transform some spaces into spaces that feel much more like a home environment than a hospital environment.

Patients choices are often drastically reduced when they are in hospital, we also aim, where feasible, to increase the level of choice presented to the patient.

The need for patients peer to peer support within the hospital.

The need for some form of normalized social environment.

The need for relatives to have non clinical spaces in which to visit their loved ones.

The Green Space and Art Space PSP programme

Autumn Activities Programme @ Royal Edinburgh Hospital

Image | October 1, 2015November 4, 2015 | Artlink Edinburgh

Ward 14

September 30, 2015September 24, 2015 | Artlink Edinburgh

This series of workshops developed out of the taster tester workshops we did earlier in the year.

Ward 14 is a male only dementia ward and James Mclardy has been working on the ward with their activities coordinator Vanessa Campbell. To engage the men on this ward James had to devise a practical workshop that somehow related back to the patients working past. The idea he came up with was to paint and wood grain long strips of wood. It was an immediate success with the patients, so much so that James had to keep prepping more pieces of wood for the next workshop as the men went into production overdrive. The results are individual while maintaining a familiar aesthetic across all the pieces produced.

James then took the grained pieces of wood and cut notches out of them so they could fit together in a modular system – this was also a great success with the patients enabling them to put together new and different constructions in the workshop.

The workshop is ongoing and it has been agreed that the outcome from these workshops will be:

A ‘grained’ artwork which will hang in the activities room.
A ‘grained’ modular system that allows the patients to continue to build constructions with Vanessa once the Artlink programme of workshops is finished.
A large scale sign which has been ‘grained’ by the patients which says ‘Welcome to our ward’.

I’ll post more images as things progress.

Taster Tester workshops

September 24, 2015 | Artlink Edinburgh

This year we started doing taster tester workshops on the wards. These comprised a series of two workshops per ward. These were designed to help us get to know patients and staff on different wards while helping us determine whether the ward wanted us to develop a longer workshop programme with them. The intention was to do the taster tester workshops on four wards and then develop a workshop programme on two of those wards. The feedback at the end was that each ward wanted us to work with them on a longer basis, therefore we initiated four workshop programmes which go onto the end of March 2016.

The taster tester workshops were on Wards 13, 14, 17 and Balcarres and we are currently working on Ward 14 and Balcarres. Here are some photographs from the initial workshops. Later on in the blog you can see what we have been doing on each of the wards.