Sally’s son suffers from a chronic illness, so she regularly visits Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. In this video, she shares how the hospital’s art collection and thoughtfully designed environment have provided comfort and distraction during challenging times.
Watch the video or read the transcript below.
Sally shares how art helped support her family during a challenging time
Arriving at Chelsea and Westminster
I’ve been coming to Chelsea and Westminster for the past three years because unfortunately my son was diagnosed with a chronic illness three years ago.
Leading up to the time when we came here, William, my son, had been hospitalised in a regional hospital near to where we live, but he had an operation, there were complications, and it was felt that he needed the specialist help and treatments that he could only get here at Chelsea and Westminster.
So we were transferred by ambulance to this hospital.
Discovering the art collection
He was put in a room which looked out onto one of the main atriums where The Acrobat is.
This is an amazing sort of huge sculpture by Allen Jones, I think, and it towers up the atrium, and it was just such an uplifting thing to see out of the window of the hospital room.
It gave us something to focus on that wasn’t in the room, which was really important, and we discussed it and it distracted us from some of the issues that we were facing medically.
As an artist myself, I’ve been really fascinated by the art collection at Chelsea and Westminster.
A lot of the time, when I’m here with my son, with him getting treatment, looking around at the different artworks, some of the rotating exhibitions, but also lots of the standing artworks that have become like familiar friends.
But for us, both as a parent and for my son as a patient, it has been really transformative.
The impact of the hospital environment
He actually described it to me as it feeling like we weren’t just in a clinical setting, we were in a place where he knows that people care about him because there’s something in addition to the clinical, institutional type things you can get in hospital buildings.
When we first entered Chelsea and Westminster, we came in extremely difficult circumstances, very stressed as parents and a very sickly child, and yet, the physical space and the environment was so incredibly uplifting.
It had a tangible effect on all of us.
It meant that when William was able to get up and walk around, we could go and see some of the artworks and we could talk about the art, and it was something for him to focus on away from the illness, which was incredible.
I think it just demonstrates that the hospital cares, really. It’s investing in the physical environment, which has a real impact on the way people feel.
We aim to enhance our hospitals and transform the experience of patients, their families and our Trust staff.
