St George’s Arts Week 2024 – Round Up
12 July 2024
This annual event showcases St George’s Hospital Charity’s year-round programme of creative initiatives for staff, patients, visitors and the wider community. It also gives us an opportunity to invite artists and musicians to deliver new work, using our hospitals as their stage and our community as their creative collaborators. This year, our theme was ‘Seeking Solace’ chosen to reflect the positive impact enjoying creative activities can have on our wellbeing.
Seeking solace through movement:
Throughout the week, we invited CoDa Dance Company to run a series of ‘Dance for Neurology’ workshops on inpatient wards at both St George’s and Queen Mary’s Hospitals. Coda Dance Company work directly with neuro-disabled people and their support networks to create pioneering immersive dance experiences and performances that challenge perceptions of disability.
Using ‘water’ as a starting point, Dancers Jodie Honeybourne and Nikki Watson encouraged patients to share, via movement, ways they might ‘seek solace’ by or in, water. From paddling a canoe to wild swimming in a lake, it was fantastic to see the range of responses brought to the groups.
Seeking solace through music:
For many of us, listening to music helps us relax. Live music performances from a Jazz Trio from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and Resident Musician, Heather McClelland (with special guest, cellist, Fraser Bowles) gave the opportunity to focus on something different over lunch or when simply taking 5 in one of St George’s beautiful garden spaces.
Over at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Resident Musician Beth Hopkins has been working with patients to write songs explaining the ways in which they seek solace. To showcase this work, we hosted a Celebration Event on the Gwynne Holford Ward.
Joined by Heather McClelland, the songs were performed to a room of enthusiastic and grateful patients and staff, with a backdrop of artworks created by patients with Resident Artist, Monique Jackson.
Seeking solace through community:
Creating together can also provide a chance to seek solace in community. This term, our St Geoge’s Staff Choir, led by Georgia Duncan, have been working together on their own song, to explore how to support one another in seeking solace.
The powerful and touching result: ‘Song of Hope’ was performed for the close of St George’s Arts Week 2024
Students from the Royal College of Art took on a similar approach when leading song writing and collage workshops. Messages of reassurance, encouragement and solitude were contributed throughout the day, before a special and heartfelt performance by Ina Leah, supported by Sharol Ahluwalia brought all these sentiments together in song as a gift for our community.
We also led visual arts workshops to bring staff together as a community. At Queen Mary’s Hospital, Resident Artist Monique Jackson was joined by artist Emily Stapleton-Jefferis to lead a Marbling Workshop, whilst at St George’s, Florist Lorelle Mykoo led staff through the process of making their very own dried-flower bouquets.
These workshops not only provided a chance to take a break from the busy working day, but a beautiful and natural object for each participant to take away and seek solace in looking at in weeks to come.
Seeking solace through creativity:
Often repetitive creative processes can help to instil calm and relaxation, something we looked to achieve through our Textile Mobile Making Drop-In Workshops, led by Artist, Nicky Simpson and Mini Tapestry Making Workshops led by Rumbidzai Savanhu.
With a large array of recycled fabrics, coloured ribbons and yarn to choose from, participants enjoyed creating their own mini-masterpieces whilst waiting for appointments or on a short break.
Seeking solace through our environment:
The spaces we are in can make a huge difference to how we feel. Workshops led by Resident Artist Phoebe Kaniewska encouraged participants to think about what made them feel calm in healthcare environments and illustrate these on large sheets of paper.
A drop-in Arts and Heritage workshop outside Grosvenor Wing, led by Creative Heritage Resident Artist, George Murphy, encouraged participants to take time to look in detail at some of the artworks from the St George’s Art and Heritage Collection, and create their own stamp inspired by them.
Inside the building, we exhibited a series of photographic prints from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition, kindly donated by the Natural History Museum. The display provides a welcome chance for our community to transport themselves out of the busy hospital corridors, into beauty of nature and seek solace these landscapes, even if just for a moment.
Seeking solace into the future:
To close St George’s Arts Week 2024, we were joined by representatives from St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and NHS England to officially open our new COVID Commemoration Pavilion.
‘Pause’ has been designed by landscape, art and architecture practise Wayward in collaboration with staff over the past three years. Displaying etched words shared by staff through consultation, the Pavilion weaves natural materials with carefully chosen planting, providing our staff with a much-needed tranquil space to seek solace and reflect for many years to come.
We would like to thank all our artists, partners and colleagues for their unwavering support for the week, and most of to all our participants for their enthusiasm in letting go and taking part. We will be back next year!
St George’s Arts Week is organised and funded by Arts St George’s, part of St George’s Hospital Charity. To find out more about our Arts Programme, please click here, or follow @artsstgeorges on socials.
With thanks to the additional support of our funders:
The National Lottery Heritage Fund for their generous grant for our ‘Our Hospital: Conserving, Curating and Responding to the St George’s Art and Heritage Collection’ project.
The Friends of Queen Mary’s Hospital for their funding of our Resident Artists and creative activities for staff at Queen Mary’s Hospital.
