A unique charity is bringing art to England’s mental health wards, transforming sterile spaces into hubs of creativity
It was nearly 10 years ago that Tim A Shaw and his partner, Niamh White, found themselves visiting a close friend who had been admitted as an inpatient to a mental health unit.
“It was a really inhumane, cold, clinical space,” he recalls. “Very bare. Quite claustrophobic. Entirely the opposite of where someone who’s really struggling should be. It felt like our friend had been let down.”
What would happen, the pair wondered, if they could draw on their backgrounds in the art world – Shaw is an artist, White a curator – to “bring artists in and transform the space? We’re used to making spaces beautiful for other people. It felt like we could translate that into mental health units.”
What began as a one-off project to bring creativity, colour and joy to a single mental health setting – The Phoenix Unit at South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS trust – soon expanded to become Hospital Rooms, a mental health charity with a nationwide reach. Shaw and White have since created vibrant, site-specific artworks in 25 hospital spaces, collaborating with dozens of curators, artists, inpatients and NHS staff members.
The commissioning and development process works differently for each location, so that the artists involved can respond to the specific circumstances in which they find themselves. For a project currently taking place at inpatient mental health wards in Redruth and Bodmin in Cornwall, for example, “it feels quite important that most of the artists live in Cornwall”, explains Shaw.
Other projects that have unfolded in child and adolescent mental health units or in those that specialise in dementia care have attracted artists with personal connections to those particular challenges. “We work with lots of artists with different aesthetics and different voices, because it makes each project feel really vibrant and collaborative and different,” says Shaw.
Many of the projects involve inpatients and staff as active participants: not just taking part in workshops as part of the research and development process, but picking up paintbrushes or pencils themselves. “We started realising there needed to be quite a big range of approaches to making art. It shouldn’t be one voice and one vision,” says Shaw. “There is a responsibility to give people choice.”
A 2019 project at the Hellingly Centre in East Sussex saw artists – including Shaw himself – working alongside service users to produce the Hellingy Tapestry. This epic mural, inspired by the area’s links to the Bayeux Tapestry and the Battle of Hastings, took shape over the course of six months, enabling patients to see themselves and their stories reflected in the finished work.
“The projects don’t just change the environment on the mental health units,” explains Shaw. “They offer the opportunity for mental health patients, artists and NHS staff to work together and be part of a creative problem-solving exercise. In the best cases, the culture and energy of a ward can change too.”
Hospital Rooms is aiming to reach over the next three years 180,000 people who have been diagnosed with severe mental illness
The painter Orlanda Broom was one of five artists commissioned by Hospital Rooms to create artwork for Rosebud, a mental health rehabilitation ward run by the Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust. Her involvement was made possible through sponsorship by Winsor & Newton, who have been supplying Hospital Rooms with art materials, and fundraising for the charity since its very first project.
“Orlanda is someone we wanted to work with for a long time,” says Shaw. “She makes these incredible, fantastical landscapes and we thought: ‘What an amazing thing for a mental health ward – where you often spend quite a lot of time indoors – to bring in something spectacular and full of nature.’”
The vibrant murals that Broom painted in the centre’s sitting room serve as “windows out into this otherly world”, Shaw adds.
Orlanda Broom creates bright paintings of lush and floral landscapes, and fluid and abstract works. Image: Winsor & Newton
In addition to its work on the ground in mental health units, Hospital Rooms now runs Digital Art School. This series, which began during the pandemic when the charity was unable to access its in-person projects, sees acclaimed artists leading online art classes in everything from clay and fashion illustration to drawing and collage. The materials used in the tutorials have all been donated by Winsor & Newton, reflecting the company’s belief in the power of art to stimulate and heal through creativity.
Digital Art School classes are open to all patients, and to ensure they are truly accessible, the charity is sending boxes of high-quality art supplies to all 750 of England’s NHS inpatient mental health sites. “Winsor & Newton donated vast amounts of paints, paper, brushes, pastels, ink, markers, stencils and stickers – it took us six weeks to pack all those boxes with a whole team of people,” explains Shaw.
We’re used to making spaces beautiful for other people – it felt like we could translate that into mental health units
“Often when you go into inpatient wards, it’s cheap poster paints and dried-up brushes. There’s something really satisfying about using really nice materials to create something interesting or potentially beautiful.”
The scale of the Digital Art School is ambitious. With all 58 of England’s NHS mental health trusts having registered to participate in the scheme, Hospital Rooms is aiming to reach over the next three years 180,000 people who have been diagnosed with severe mental illness. “What we’ve always wanted is for Hospital Rooms to make it possible for people in inpatient mental health units to take part in something creative, and this is a good step towards that,” Shaw says.
The calibre of the artists involved and the quality of the materials provided, is indicative of the charity’s thinking around the need to destigmatise mental illness and treatment spaces. “Any art school in the country would be lucky to have one of our Digital Art School artists as a tutor. It’s not a lesser version, because it’s for something in the hospital.”
Main image: Winsor & Newton
