Overview
Onward Arts is our permanent art programme. Through the use of the arts, we seek to improve the experience of patients, visitors and staff and create a healing hospital environment for all.
CONNECT is the public art programme for the redevelopment of the Royal Sussex County Hospital. It will bring a unique quality to the new patient and public environments, that reflects the hospital’s values of compassionate care for all.
More information
About Onward Arts
Through the use of the arts, we seek to improve the experience of patients, visitors and staff and create a healing hospital environment for all.
Passionate about arts in health, we advocate the value of integrating the arts into the culture of the Trust and deliver high quality, patient-centred, arts projects in partnership with the communities we serve.
Contact
If you would like further details please contact Erin.Burns@nhs.net
Our work
Below are details of some of the projects which Onward Arts has been involved with in recent years.
Wishing Well Musicians At the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital
This inspirational film shows the positive and often joyous affect live music has on children in hospital. Please view it and spread the word about this wonderful service.
Onward Arts Blog
The Onward Arts Blog is part of a programme of arts for staff across BSUH. It is an online platform for staff to share creative work in any form, around the theme of emotional touchstones. As well as show-casing the range of work, the blog will hopefully contribute to a sense of creative community across the hospital.
Women in the NHS – A Project by Onward Arts
As the NHS turned 70 in 2018 Onward Arts launched this project to celebrate the 80% of NHS staff who are women. The project was funded by generous donations to the BSUH Charity and led by Anna Barnes on behalf of Onward Arts. Artist Mary Hooper and photographer Josie Barnes have developed the initial idea #BSUH Women into the panels featured here.
Our aim is to spotlight some inspirational BSUH women and to increase the visibility of female role models across all BSUH staff groups. Participants were nominated by their peers and colleagues. They were asked to select an object, related to work or their life – passions, hobbies, families – which is featured in the montage panel with their portraits as a corresponding panel. The text included in the panels is a selection of quotes from a questionnaire that explains the significance of the objects chosen, reasons for choice of profession, passions and hobbies, female role models, and problems or obstacles faced during their careers.
Members of the Steering Group were moved by the stories people told about their lives and careers, stories which showed how far we have come in recent years.
#Metoo and the gender pay gap have highlighted the persistence of inequities and discrimination which many of us had assumed were historic. This has been a ‘wake-up call’ about the need to take positive action to achieve change for the next generation of women. We hope that this display will interest, engage and inspire all BSUH employees, particularly women across all professional groups. The photographs and the full Q & A text will be also be available in a printed and online book.
You can view the full ‘Women in the NHS’ booklet here.
This project is displayed in the corridor outside the Euan Keat Education Centre at Princess Royal Hospital.
About CONNECT
CONNECT is the public art programme for the redevelopment of the Royal Sussex County Hospital. It will bring a unique quality to the new patient and public environments, that reflects the hospital’s values of compassionate care for all.
It will use art to create new links between the hospital, the city, county and community by celebrating the unique character and culture of Brighton and Sussex.
The arts programme is an integral part of the whole hospital redevelopment and meets the planning policy requirement for art in new public buildings. It will cost 0.25% of the total redevelopment budget.
The integration of public art into the redevelopment is a requirement of the Brighton and Hove Council’s Percent for Art policy that operates as part of planning policy.
