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Scope of Work
The work of Exeter Healthcare Arts (EHCA) is recognised as pioneering, providing a benchmark for the Arts & Heath community. The work receives favourable comment from visitors and staff concerning its core work within the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust and its hospitals. Its work with other healthcare providers has also been well received.
The work sits comfortably with the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust’s Strategic Objects. It is a key component to ‘deliver services in an environment which is comfortable, acceptable and friendly for patients, improves health and wellbeing and enables staff to care for patients effectively’.
The work also contributes to the delivery of the ‘Standards for Better Healthcare’ across all NHS service delivery organisations.
Recently EHCA has successfully worked with the St Leonard’s Practice in Exeter on arts & health initiatives and was consultant to the Devon Partnership Trust’s Kings Fund supported project at the Briers, ‘Improving the Healing Environment’. Past projects have included acting as arts & environment consultant to Wonford House Hospital and instigator and coordinator for ‘For some good measure’, the arts & health show case for Exeter and its district held in 2005.
EHCA can offer four main strands of work:
- The establishment of changing exhibition schemes and more static core collections of works, which have been purchased or on long term loan from individual artists, local institutions or from the Paintings in Hospitals (PiH) scheme.
- Interior design consultancy and landscape design commissioning – EHCA works with the NHS estates teams and architect-led design teams to advise on interior design issues, colour, materials and the strategic use of artworks. EHCA also commissions landscape design and build projects in new developments. Recent key projects have been the Devon Garden for the Centre for Women’s Health and the new approach to the RD&E hospital’s main entrance. In both these projects EHCA took responsibility for design.
- Participatory arts and musical events are delivered by EHCA. This has involved recitals and events in public areas of the hospitals and other healthcare. Visual artists are placed within the hospital environments to run participatory workshops. This benefits patients as well as training healthcare staff in new skills which are used at other times. The work resulting from these events can be reinvested to enhance the healing environment.
- An emerging theme is the development of screen based work. This consists of relaxing scenes of the natural world delivered digitally to flat screens. Natural scenes are interspersed with written messages informing patients about waiting times and other relevant information.
Exeter HealthCare Arts tailors each project to the individual needs of a facility or organisation. The process begins with a meeting with the appropriate management staff and site visit. An initial report is compiled, outlining the opportunities for including the arts in the development or service delivery. Typically this will present a number of options and the cost of each in terms of our involvement. It may also outline possible project costs. Once the scope of work is agreed a project programme proposal is developed by EHCA. Recruitment of artists, designers and other creative practitioners is managed by EHCA and involves the client body closely at all stages of the process. Each element of the programme is then project managed by EHCA staff.
Introduction