Today, 30th May 2024, Hospital Rooms announces a major nationwide arts programme. Digital Art School is an innovative three-year programme that will provide artist-led digital workshops and free art materials to every NHS inpatient mental health site in England, hoping to reach 180,000 inpatients diagnosed with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) per year.
All 58 NHS mental health trusts in England have registered to participate in the scheme, which supports Occupational and Art Therapists in leading creative sessions for service users in inpatient mental health care across the UK. The project aims to reach all 598 mental health units managed by NHS England.
Digital Art School is supported by Arts Council England, the Art Explora – Académie des Beaux-Arts European Award, Winsor & Newton and Pinterest, with additional support from Manuela and Iwan Wirth.
Digital Art School will provide free, monthly artist-led workshops, available to watch live or on-demand, accompanied by high quality art resources for NHS staff to facilitate sessions for service users in mental health units. Participants will also have access to a calendar of interactive creative events throughout the year. The programme features workshops created with acclaimed artists including Abbas Zahedi, Dolly Sen, Giles Deacon, José Parlá, Ken Nwadiogbu, Michaela Yearwood-Dan, Sarah Dwyer, Sutapa Biswas, and more, covering a diverse range of topics from expressive painting, collage and drawing. Each inpatient site will receive a bespoke materials box designed by artist José Parlá, filled with art supplies donated by Winsor & Newton.
The programme has been designed with, and for, people with SMI, alongside NHS staff. Hospital Rooms is collaborating closely with the NHS to democratise access to arts and creativity and enrich the lives of patients nationwide. To support facilitators in delivering the programme, Hospital Rooms will also release dedicated instructional videos. One of the only creative outlets accessible within mental health wards, Digital Art School will support Hospital Rooms’ mission to foster the integration of creativity into the mental health space, in ways that are conducive to healing and wellbeing.
The programme builds on a pilot project developed by Hospital Rooms during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, when Covid-19 restrictions halted in-person projects and hospital wards were provided with iPads and WiFi for the first time, Hospital Rooms began delivering virtual sessions as alternatives to its in person sessions. Now a core aspect of its programming, these workshops have seen up to 300 people attend per session, with views in 48 countries and workshops watched in over 300 postcodes in the UK. The nationwide rollout of the project, available to every NHS Trust in England, marks a major milestone for Hospital Rooms’ ongoing mission to bring art and creativity to mental health spaces. Digital Art School will also be available to the public through its new digital platform, which will also host an archive of over 50 workshops, making the programme accessible to the 8 million people on waiting lists to access NHS mental health services.
Mental health service-users, often under a Section of the Mental Health Act, frequently encounter barriers to creative expression and artistic practices due to restrictions on both the materials and online content they can access, and the mental and physical symptoms of their diagnoses. Social factors, inequalities and racism also influence service-user experience. Poor mental health affects the quality of life of millions of adults and children. It is the second largest cause of morbidity in England (Public Health England 2022), and the impact of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis is expected to impact mental health even further. The beneficiaries of Digital Art School are people who live with some of the most difficult mental health diagnoses. Although definitions are contentious, people with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) are commonly understood to be frequently and chronically debilitated by mental illness, and around 500,000 people are currently diagnosed with SMI (Public Health England 2022).
We’re embarking on an extraordinary journey with the launch of the national Digital Art School programme. This ambitious 3-year programme embodies our commitment to make art an integral and accessible part of mental health care. Extraordinary artist tutors, many of whom share lived experiences of mental health services and who interrogate modes of traditional arts education as part of their practice, will lead wildly diverse creative sessions offering propositions and provocations that challenge and disarm what can be highly managed and difficult environments. By leveraging digital technology, we’re so proud that we’re able to bring Digital Art School to every NHS mental health site across England, vastly scaling the impact that we are able to have. Digital Art School represents a significant step towards democratising access to art and creativity for individuals facing mental health challenges.
– Niamh White and Tim A Shaw, Co-founders, Hospital Rooms
About Hospital Rooms
Hospital Rooms is a charity that brings world-class art and creative programming to mental health hospitals. We collaborate with artists, service users, and NHS staff to craft innovative site-specific artworks and creative programmes. We strive to dispel stigmas and advocate for culture and creativity in mental health as a universal human right.
Artist Tim A Shaw and curator Niamh White founded Hospital Rooms after a close friend was admitted to a mental health hospital. On visiting her, they were shocked to find the hospital environment was cold and clinical at a time when she was so vulnerable. Since the charity’s founding in 2016, Hospital Rooms has worked with acclaimed artists to transform mental health hospitals with high-quality artworks. To date, the team has completed 23 projects across the country and is changing what is perceived to be possible in these spaces. Hospital Rooms is a registered charity and part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio.
