A ‘POWERFUL’ collage of pandemic-inspired artwork created by isolated residents in lockdown has been displayed in two Warwickshire hospitals.
The art was the result of 10,000 ‘creative packs’, delivered by stratford-based creative wellbeing charity Escape Arts across Warwickshire, to isolated residents, and staff and patients at Warwick and George Eliot Hospitals. They aimed to offer people a creative outlet through which to express themselves and help improve mental wellbeing.
The packs included activities such a creating ‘Pandemic Postcards’ as a positive outlet to give thanks to NHS staff and offer messages of hope for the future.
The individual artwork created was combined to create a larger collage of work featuring nearly 200 images.
Charity chief executive Karen Williams described the collage as ‘powerful and emotive’.
She said: “The capturing of each person’s Covid-19 experience through this project has been beyond anything we ever expected, and the impact continues to grow. Seeing all of the individual artworks joined together as one piece in each hospital has created such a powerful piece of work. It’s quite emotional seeing it and reading all the messages, and I think the impact on both hospital staff teams and patients that view it is very emotive.”
South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust chief executive Glen Burley added: “I am so pleased we have been involved in this project, every time I look at it I see something different. The artwork captures many emotions and memories of the past year. Some really sad things happened and at times our staff and patients were scared. But a very strong team spirit and overwhelming community support helped us to get through, all of which is beautifully captured in the artwork. What I love about it is that, like our response to the pandemic, so many different people have contributed to it. Thank you to everyone that has been involved and especially to Escape Arts for facilitating such a great project.”
Visit www.escapearts.org.uk/covid-19-project-one-be-creative/ to view the project.
