Healing Arts Programme

Enhancing the hospital environment for patients, visitors and staff.

For the past 20 years Bright has developed an award-winning healing arts programme to enhance the hospital environment for patients, visitors, and staff.

As many of us are now aware, research has shown that having access to the arts can have a positive effect on health and wellbeing.

As well as providing health benefits, engaging with the arts can also provide a welcome distraction, particularly when in a clinical hospital environment.

We run a varied arts programme which includes art exhibitions, events, artist-led workshops, performance, community projects, activities for patients and live music performances.

Many of our hospital corridors are used as gallery spaces – we show work by professional artists, community groups, patients, staff, schools, and universities.

The Healing Arts programme organises many competitions and events for our patents, staff and our local communities. Watch out for news about opportunities to get involved.

If you would like to find out more, contact brightcharity@nothumbria.nhs.uk

North Tyneside artist opens her new baby-focussed art exhibition at Northumberland hospital

Our arts programme history

During the first years, the charity partnered with Northumbria University’s Professor Gerda Roper to launch a number of innovative award-winning arts projects.

The first of which, Images of Trust, led to an archive of valuable photographs taken by Ikuko Tsuchiya, which documented a year in the life of the trust at the beginning of the 21st century.

In 2002 the trust developed the Teardrop Garden at Wansbeck General hospital working with Professor Chris Dorsett, and the Ryu Group of Japanese arts students, from Northumbria University. The trust supported five Arts in Health doctoral programmes to evidence the benefit of the arts as a healing medium.

In preparation for the opening of the new Hexham General Hospital in 2003, Professor Gerda Roper curated an arts programme which enabled MA and PhD students to have a permanent exhibition of their work, whilst enhancing the hospital environment.

Our collaborations

The charity began to offer opportunities for MA students to exhibit their work at North Tyneside General Hospital. The first student, Jonathan Chapman, benefitted from an audience of more than 2000 people each week, leading to commissions and an opportunity to exhibit in America.

Between 2006- 2012, Dr Mark Welfare collaborated with PhD student Christina Kolaiti to develop and deliver a photography course, The Camera Never Lies? as a Student Selected Component (SSC) for medical students as part of the Medical Humanities curriculum.

For two years, the charity worked with the Kings Fund to develop the Wansbeck Oasis, an Enhancing the Healing Environment project to provide dedicated facilities for use by families of patients who were near the end of life.

Working with our community

The programme continued to develop to incorporate music performances, dancing, poetry and art workshops for staff. A low-cost art curatorial system was developed, to create designated spaces for artist networks, school and community artwork, staff exhibitions and more.

From 2009 the charity began to develop projects in the community working with amateur and professional artists, local community groups, disability groups and schools. By this time, the Healing Arts Programme had spread across the trust’s 10 hospital sites.

An Arts Steering Group was set up to plan and deliver the arts strategy for the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital which opened in 2015, featuring commissions and artworks by local artists and staff.

Our impact

Over recent years the charity has been able to undertake a number of award-winning healing environment projects, working with staff and patients, to design areas that provide a more relaxed and homely environment away from busy clinical areas.

In 2020 the Healing Arts Programme was recognised with a gold award at the International CSR Awards, where multinational corporations from across the world were in attendance.