Room for You is seeking applications from visual artists to create artwork through the delivery of creative sessions at Freeman Hospital’s Teenage Cancer Unit.

Room for You is seeking applications from visual artists to create artwork through the delivery of creative sessions at Freeman Hospital’s Teenage Cancer Unit. Artists work in partnership with counselling facilitators to ensure a high degree of sensitivity towards patients and carers and enable them to participate in the making of artwork in a supported way.  

We are looking for artists from any discipline including painting, sculpture, drawing, textiles, printmaking, sound art, illustration and particularly welcome artists who work with screen based mediums or digital media. Artists must have experience of working either with young people, vulnerable groups and/or healthcare settings.

We are asking artists to provide a proposal of a project that you can deliver to patients at the teenage cancer unit over 4-6 sessions, however we are also interested in hearing from you if you have shorter or longer projects, please do get in touch if you have something that fits outside of these guidelines. Following an initial series of artist programmes, one artist will be offered a longer programme of work on the unit chosen by patients who have taken part in the activities. We normally work on wards / day rooms over a period of 2 or 3 hours per session. This project is located in a day room attached to a ward, however artists may also work with patients individually by taking a mobile unit to each bed, so please consider this when you apply. 

A key feature of our delivery is that artists work in partnership with counselling facilitators, whose role is to talk to patients and support them through giving them space to talk and explain what is happening on the ward. We are looking for proposals which acknowledge and deliver a good working relationship to both artist and facilitator. Please be aware that the nature of this work can be emotionally demanding. Artists are given the opportunity to attend counselling sessions within the hospital to have the space and time to reflect on their experiences on the ward.

Work made by artists and patients will be exhibited at the end of the project both within the ward and other spaces within the hospital as well as at a venue outside the hospital setting.

Budget

Up to £1200 to include all fees, materials and planning. This fee is based on a project of up to 6 half day sessions.

Timeline

The project will commence from February 2018 pending the outcome of funding applications.

Background

The Room for You project started in 2001 as a pilot set up by two former cancer patients, Ali Rhind and Mary Jennings. They combined their talents, Ali as an artist and Mary as a counsellor, to set up an innovative project where artist and counsellor work together in the out-patient waiting areas. As well as offering a distraction for those awaiting treatment, the project aimed to transform the dispiriting atmosphere of the waiting room, both by the presence of art activity and also through the artworks produced.

Artist and counsellor/facilitators now co-work each week at the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, Newcastle; the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead and City Hospital Sunderland and in a growing number of community healthcare settings and Hospices  in the North East.

In 2012, Room for You became a charitable company limited by guarantee.

A unique feature of our way of working is the pairing of artists with counsellor facilitators, which ensures a high degree of sensitivity towards patients and carers, allowing them to approach the artists and participate in the work in a supported way. We work with patients in both a hospital setting where they attend for treatment and post treatment in community healthcare settings. The relationships they form with the facilitators and artists, and the release they find in art work, can be very important to them.

The artwork is used as a vehicle for what we provide, which may be listening time as much as creative opportunity. The artists and facilitators need to be sensitive to ‘how’ people are waiting and identify those who may appreciate some contact and support. Many don’t wish to talk but tell us they enjoy watching the activity and find it stimulating, and thus the process of making art can work on different levels.

Whether it’s a hospital waiting area or a creative arts workshop in a community setting, we aim to provide support through creative activities and to offer a compassionate ear.  We believe that in this way we can engage people and offer participation and some recognition of them as the person they are outside – in the real world.