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The redeveloped Broadmoor Hospital is a high-secure mental health care unit for patients with severe mental illness. Patients typically spend long periods here – years or even decades. The environment, therefore, plays a profound role in supporting a sense of hope, wellbeing, health, and recovery.
We ran workshops with patients, engaging them in conversations, and allowing them to express themselves freely. Much of this creative expression – words, ideas, drawings, paintings, collages – was incorporated directly into designs, and in some cases, final artwork for the building. This includes murals, windows, entrance panels, paving, weather shelters and more.
One of the most important spaces at Broadmoor is the multi-faith room, which is designed to be adaptable for prayer and meditation across a broad spectrum of faiths.
We worked with the late artist Jon Thompson – curator of Freeze and head of Goldsmiths Art School – to develop a window for this room, which aims to bring spiritual and emotional support. Jon, the patients, and Broadmoor spiritual leaders called it a place of peace.
“The window’s bold colours pour into the room creating an immediate atmosphere that distinguishes this space as ‘other’ and ‘special’ quite different from anywhere else in the hospital. There is an immanent sense of warmth and welcome which transcends any narrow tradition or teaching.”
The Rev McMahon, Head of Chaplaincy
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During workshops, patients talked about the symbolic importance of being able to see the sky as a universal experience.
In response, Thompson’s design – shown above on gouache – evokes the cycle of day and night. The final window was constructed from a coloured Vanceva panels.
Patients and staff each drew a star. These decorate enamel door panels, which sit at the entrance of the multi-faith room. Each unique star makes a constellation, reiterating a sense of belonging to a single community.
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Artist and mental health activist James Leadbitter, founder of Madlove, ran workshops with patients to inform the design of garden shelters for patients. These workshops were based around senses. “What can you see / touch that would support your mental health?”.
This led to the development of a shelter whose protecting roof structure becomes a meterological symbol– a temple to the clouds, the sun, or the rain.
“This workshop demonstrated the extent to which these patients are sensorially-deprived, and also… the fact that an enduring sense of pleasure comes in the elemental and symbolic presence of the weather and sky in their lives.”
Martin Jones, Art in Site, after attending workshops
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In another series of workshops, patients were asked to write a letter to their former self. They were asked to imagine a new patient arriving, and construct words and images of encouragement. What might they see that will give them heart?
Poet and advocate David Neita attended many of the workshops. He conducted poetry, verbal and written expression workshops. These informed many artworks around the building, including sandblasted paths and paving.
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In high secure environments, patients are restricted from owning objects and personalising their environment, let alone presenting artwork with their peers.
Artist Maryrose Sinn explored how patients and Occupational Therapists could make use of proposed “Avagos” – bespoke designed community display cabinets.
These Avagos are a profoundly impactful intervention that can help to restore the balance and inspire hope.
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The “colour workshop” was based on artist Joseph Albers’s notion that you can’t look at colour in isolation. We ran an exercise with patients: find a colour you like and a colour you don’t like and put them together. Then add in a “bridging” colour. Patients strung a series of these together to make ‘stories’ of consecutive colours.
Through this creative process, a theme of unity, links and overlapping was developed. This fed into designs for the coloured window vinyls that give privacy throughout the building.
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Project Information
Date
2016
Sector
Healthcare
Service
High Secure Psychiatric Hospital
Client
West London Mental Health Trust
Artists
MadLove
Jon Thompson
AiS in house
Maryrose Sinn
David Neita
Team
Martin Jones, Celia Knox, Sam Carvosso
Awards
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