Hospital Rooms is coming to Torbay in 2022
We are excited to announce that Devon Partnership NHS Trust (DPT) has partnered with Hospital Rooms, an arts and mental health charity, to create artworks for three inpatient mental health wards at Torbay Hospital. This project involves a partnership with Torbay Culture, Healthwatch Torbay and Artizan Gallery, and has been supported by construction firm Kier and fashion retailer Anthropologie.
Hospital Rooms commission extraordinary artworks for mental health inpatient units across the UK. The charity helps turn what are often clinical, cold, and sometimes frightening rooms into welcoming, soothing and beautiful spaces. They work with acclaimed regional, national and international artists, who in turn workshop with staff and service users to come up with radically new visuals for each space. DPT have worked with Hospital Rooms previously, commissioning artwork for both The Junipers, a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit, and Jasmine Lodge, a Mother and Baby Unit in Exeter.
Healthwatch Torbay and Torbay Culture are advising on the local context, opportunities, and challenges. As part of the project’s commitment to work with local talent from Torbay and South Devon, Hospital Rooms is also being supported by Artizan Gallery to reach and discover creative practitioners from within the region who will deliver and benefit from this initiative.
‘The importance of a therapeutic environment in which to support people with mental health needs cannot be overstated. We know that art can play a huge part in helping to create this environment and I have no doubt that this project will transform these three wards, in the same way that it has done at our Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit and our Mother and Baby Unit.’
- Chris Burford, Director of Nursing and Professions at Devon Partnership NHS Trust
‘The Hospital Rooms project is an innovative and exciting initiative that works across creativity and wellbeing. It shows how we can utilise the potential of us all to empower and transform. This is about changing our culture and how service users, carers, artists and staff can work together to make spaces welcoming and responsive to their needs. Torbay Culture and Healthwatch Torbay are pleased to support Hospital Rooms and their work, which illustrates the real benefits of partnership across health, community and culture’
- Kevin Dixon, Chair of Healthwatch Torbay, and board member of Torbay Culture
This Hospital Rooms project aims to create 15 artworks, five on each ward. A series of workshops will be hosted involving the artists, staff, service users and carers to generate ideas for the works for all three wards. Plans are provisionally in place for the project to begin in November 2021. Once completed, and COVID-19 guidance permitting, it is hoped that an exhibition of the artwork will be opened to the public during 2022.
To read the press pack please click the link below
Image credit: Bindi Vora, The Junipers, (Damian Griffiths/Hospital Rooms)
