A Better Place to Be

Summary:

The seven-year public art programme at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, was delivered by Fresh Arts, the arts programme managed by North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT), in collaboration with arts and health consultants Willis Newson.

This ambitious public art plan, featuring the work of local, national and internationally recognised artists as well as by recent graduates, animates environments, creates uniquely identifiable areas within the hospital building and grounds and supports physical and emotional healing and recovery. These commissions sit within a wider arts programme involving patients, staff and the local community, particularly through the focus of the first Fresh Arts Festival in October 2014.  This Festival brought poetic first aid, a community knitting installation, model car racing, promenade theatre, 12 community choirs, live music and a writer-in-residence on the wards to celebrate the opening of the new building and demonstrate the impact of arts and creativity on health and wellbeing to a wider public audience.

Fresh Arts also managed five years of arts projects which helped ease the transition from the old hospitals to the new and supported patient, visitor and staff wellbeing.

Southmead Hospital sets a new benchmark for the quality of the patient environment and the role played by art in delivering this. It has also demonstrated the importance of the arts to the Trust as a whole and resulted in strong Board-level commitment to, and understanding of, the role that the arts can play in the culture of the Trust in the long term.