Between 18 February – 25 May 2016, the Bdc ran a series of three residencies with North West-based craft artists at The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust and The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust.
Funded by an Arts Council’s Grants for the Arts award, our fundraising Garden Party and our hospital partners, the artists each worked for two days per week over a 6-week period. They worked with patients, relatives, clinicians, volunteers and staff.
Textile artist Rachael Howard worked with the elderly and those with dementia at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital; potter John Ayling worked in the stroke rehabilitation and trauma units at Broadgreen Hospital; and ceramic artist and designer Mari-Ruth Oda worked in the neurology wards at the Walton Centre.
The selected artists developed workshop sessions which engaged, calmed and relaxed patients, encouraging them to work with their hands and learn new skills.
The experience of working with patients and staff contributed to the development by the artists of three high quality legacy artwork commissions, which are sited on permanent display at each of the partner hospitals.
For more information about the individual residencies, please follow the links at the bottom of the page.
In 2015/16, the Bdc worked with Person Shaped Support (PSS) to deliver our second programme of artist-led workshops to demonstrate the benefits that craft can have on a person’s overall health and wellbeing.
The programme of workshops ran from 1 October 2015 – 31 May 2016 and involved 6 x two-day workshops with PSS partner locations: Helen Chatterton & Elizabeth Willow at the Women’s Turnaround Project; Nawal Gebreel at the Leeson Centre; Kirsti Hannah Brown & Mike Badger at the Umbrella Centre; and Sian Hughes at The Avenue, Belle Vale.
The PSS workshops were funded by the P.H. Holt Foundation, to whom we are grateful for their ongoing support.
For more information about the individual workshop series, please follow the links below.