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In September the Senior Health team at St George’s Trust organised a Team Building afternoon.

Last month, the Senior Health team at St George’s Trust organised a Team Building afternoon. Keen to involve a creative activity,

Senior Health Consultant, Joanna Preston reached out to the Arts St George’s team to enable them to bring a Dulwich Arts Group to lead a session at the end of the afternoon. We caught up with Joanna to find out all about it!

'Tell us about your team and what you hoped to achieve through the away day...'

We wanted a chance to take some time away from our clinical work to regroup as a team. Prior to Covid we were doing this fairly regularly but this was our first opportunity for a couple of years to spend a dedicated afternoon away from the hospital all together.

Our focus was to share with each other the good work that has been done in developing Senior Health services over the last 18 months, like pilots to work alongside ENT and General Surgery colleagues and the expansion of the trauma liaison services.

‘What made you opt for a creative activity?’

We often try to add in an activity to our away afternoons – it sets the tone that this isn’t just another meeting in a different place. The Dulwich Art Group facilitated a brilliant life drawing session with two models, one young and one older, exploring physical and identity changes associated with growing older.

Everyone enjoyed it, even though most had never really drawn before – it wasn’t really about that. Working mainly with older adults, this gave us an opportunity to view our work from different perspectives and using completely different parts of our brains.

‘Are there any parts of the Arts St George’s programme you would particularly encourage your colleagues to get involved with?’

It’s such a privilege to have the Arts St George's programme to support bringing the non-clinical into and around, our work. Ultimately we all do our jobs to help people to live their lives and living is about enjoying some form of art, music, books, films etc.

I would recommend signing up to the Staff Arts Club for their free access to things like drawing workshops and tickets to galleries. We all need more of that at this stage in the pandemic.

Are you a Staff Member looking for creative activities to take part in with your team? Don’t forget to sign up to our Staff Arts Club here.

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