PATIENCE (press release)

Snapshots from hospital beds

A book of art and poetry by older people in hospital designed to help people cope with the emotional journey through illness has been published by arts organisation arthur+martha.

PATIENCE is a no-blows-barred account of life in hospital. The poems and artworks are by people who are sometimes in the process of recovery, sometimes coming to terms with dying. There’s also a good dose of humour. Threading between are interviews with nurses, doctors and carers from Stockport hospitals in North West England.

Poet Philip Davenport explained: “PATIENCE is an experiment to see how poetry and art can complement the journey through hospital and recovery. We have left copies of the book on the wards for people to read. It is a document of the extraordinary determination, humour and kindness we encountered in hospital amongst patients and staff.”

"It brings a new outlook from my point of view, reading this book. It makes you think of something else in life, apart from yourself. You cheer one another up." (Madeleine, Patient)

"This book, it gives other people something of what you feel like." (Marjorie, Patient)

PATIENCE was compiled from workshops and interviews with people in healthcare in the North West of England by arts organisation arthur+martha in a Lottery-funded project. The book is lavishly colour illustrated throughout with photographs (many are snapshots taken by patients of the view from their hospital bed) visual poems and found objects. There are forewords by poet Carol Watts and psychiatrist Francis Creed; renowned American poet Robert Grenier wrote the ‘afterwards’.

Artist Lois Blackburn from arthur+martha said: “PATIENCE gives both an emotional and a medical picture of the journey through illness - from denial to acceptance. Dementia and Parkinson’s, depression, diabetes... We have met the experts in treating these illnesses and the sufferers, who in their own way are also experts. It has been a privilege to encounter these inspirational people.”

PATIENCE 129pp hardback, full colour ISBN 978-0-9539367-8-6 retails at £24.99 and is currently available from Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Patience-insiders-guide-surviving-ill-health/dp/0953936783/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1287569830&sr=8-4

Background

arthur+martha feature in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/29/arthur-martha-artists

Holocaust-related project devised by arthur+martha on BBC website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2009/01/26/270109_holocaust_poems_feature.shtml

Stepping Hill Open Day

Saturday, we held the launch of Patience at Stepping Hill Hospital. Coinciding with the Stepping Hill Open Day, we had a great mix of staff, patients and the general public view our book.

I took advantage of being next to the cake stall, and my whole family benefited from the fantastic chocolate roulade.  What I found most inspiring was the tireless work of the volunteers, what a fantastic bunch.

We got some more wonderful feedback to the Patience book. A retired teacher visiting the hospital, was excited by the book one particular artwork caught her attention,  Lost my Independence:

"The Spiral, the strength of steel, your mind is unwinding- like steel, gradually unwinding, from one side to another,  thats how I see it- that would express everything to me." Sylvia Piggott.

the minds of elderly patients

In response to our new book Patience, Advance Nurse Practitioner, Fiona Roscoe has written:

Who are we to know what is going on in the minds of elderly patients as they sit dutifully in their chairs waiting for the next ward round or cup of tea?

It is a time when many are at their most vulnerable and reflective but sometimes due to disability and ill health are unable to express themselves. The artists of arthur+martha have patiently sat with these souls and helped them to unlock their thoughts. In doing so, not only do we have examples of unique creative art but also a new dimension in our appreciation of our most senior citizens. (referring to Stages of grief 1950 and Parachute Landing by Albert Burrows)

Fiona Roscoe RN DN MSc BSc(Hons) is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (Primary and Urgent Care)

Patience launch at Stepping Hill Hospital

We are pleased to announce that we will be launching our book PATIENCE, at Stepping Hill Hospital during their Open Day, Saturday 25th September,  between 12 pm. and 4.00 pm. During the afternoon, we will be based at E1, the Stroke Unit. You can find out more about the open day by visiting http://www.stockporthealth.nwest.nhs.uk/

schools of nursing

In response to our new book Patience, Advance Nurse Practitioner, Fiona Roscoe has written:

The stark honesty and desperation expressed by a stroke patient in 'Ever' provides a frightening insight into her world. I would advocate that schools of nursing examine their curriculums and ensure that students are given an opportunity to experience the art produced from this project as stopping to listen to what patients are telling us is key to knowing what needs to be done to help them.

 

Fiona Roscoe RN DN MSc BSc(Hons) is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (Primary and Urgent Care)

ever

a stroke: it’s like freezing a piece of meat

waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting
a cancellation
put me back again
a slight stroke
couldn’t move my arm
so I lift it with the other one
don’t let it lie dead
rub the back of your hand
keep it going

and then it’s un-frozen

waiting and
try to keep moving
haul yourself
with a walking stick
to your exercises
tried, tired and knackered
they train you, so
if you fall in the house by yourself
trapped

but only in part and some remains

waiting and
trying to open the door
try to get to the phone
try to climb a step, up four inches
(one bad leg, two arms, nothing 100%)
terrifying thinking about it
don’t think, try to
get on, to stand

on ice.

Anonymous
24-31 July 2009

Patients reading PATIENCE

Today was our first day on the wards with the new book PATIENCE, a deep baptism. Reading these poems in the place where they first came into being, often in circumstances of great suffering, was very moving - the response from patients was powerful and generally positive, though sometimes they too were a little overwhelmed. It was as if we were finally talking about the 'elephant in the room' - everyone's relieved, but it's an awkward moment.

"It brings a new outlook from my point of view, reading this book. It makes you think of something else in life, apart from yourself. You cheer one another up." (Madeleine)

"It's terrible in here, impossible to describe. You have to live it to understand. It can help a little to hear other's experiences. A little. Please come back again and read more poems." (Douglas)

"Very good that, very true. Pass it on... It's openness. You bring things out in people, so people don't close to you... a book like this is useful to read, helps with the patience, you need a lot of patience in here." Jean

We also shared the book with staff, many of whom remembered particular people featured in the collection. As so often happens, they said that they wished they still had time to talk to the patients as we are able to do.

"The emotional side gets overlooked. Without that, you are not treating people in depth. If a patient is in the process of getting better and they have psychological or emotional problems, they won't get better as easily. To verbalise and express their problems, they feel lighter, better... If it's repressed it affects them.


Conversing with them helps. They are away from their environment, in fear. Time is a factor. Take a minute or two, take time to listen and reassure them. Reading them this book will give them an idea of what a patient can expect to go through."

(Staff Nurse Mioji Baloguh)

On E1 the Stroke ward, we read poems to patients Madge and Marjorie, who commented:

"You feel very shaky and that, not kind of with it, you can't vision yourself. This book, it gives other people something of what you feel like."


A daughter, visiting her mother who'd had a stroke two weeks ago, said:

"The book would be nice for when they start recovering and can start reading - if they can't put their feelings into their own words, they could use the book to help." (Amanda)

We hope that PATIENCE will be helpful on the wards, a conversation opener, a comforter and perhaps a communication aid as Amanda describes. There's a point when a book, having been published, makes its own way, separate from the the makers. As we put PATIENCE out into the world, it is now starting to do just that, to have its identity inscribed by its readers.

Peoples art

In response to our new book Patience, Advance Nurse Practitioner, Fiona Roscoe has written:

Thumbing through the pages of this beautifully edited book your eyes are drawn to the different fonts and styles of expression on every page. What could have been unimaginative streams of text with predictably placed pictures is instead an attractive collection of 'people's art' that would grace any coffee table or bookshelf!

 

Fiona Roscoe RN DN MSc BSc(Hons) is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (Primary and Urgent Care)

You can download a sample chapter of Patience at http://www.arthur-and-martha.co.uk It will soon be available for sale at Amazon.

Patience: coming into

In response to our new book Patience, Advance Nurse Practitioner, Fiona Roscoe has written:

Patience' defined as 'the ability to wait or endure without complaint'. The term suggests dignity and stoicism. Qualities that emerge from the participants in this book when their thoughts are expressed. For eg/ 'Coming into hospital for the fifth time.... (Mary Anandale)

 

Fiona Roscoe RN DN MSc BSc(Hons) is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (Primary and Urgent Care)

Coming into hospital for the fifth time

coming into hospital for the fifth

hate to think of so many times

it’s a desperate thought

I don’t want to think it

get on and forget sadness

get on with it and remember only the

forget

who you’ve been with

where you’ve been you’re not yourself

I’m so glad that they come

I’m so glad that they come

I can’t say how often but they do

it’s action for yourself

to see someone

to see some with the same

perhaps the same difficulties

you are not alone

there are many people like you for better or worse

there are many people who like you

good people there are many

friends of myself friends of I

saw

my place

sat in my chair

saw my place sat in my chair

I can see so much from here

I wish

good

I can see I can hear.

Mary Arrandale

Anona Entwhistle

images of patience

In response to our new book Patience, Advance Nurse Practitioner, Fiona Roscoe has written:

Beautiful thought provoking images which could easily stand alone as large portraits or pieces of art. They belong on the walls of hospital waiting rooms, nursing home entrance halls, nursing and medical school refectories. Wherever somebody may pause before moving on to carry out their purpose, be this visiting an elderly relative, submitting an assignment or explaining to a patient that he cannot be discharged because he will not be safe on his own at home.
 

Fiona Roscoe RN DN MSc BSc(Hons) is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (Primary and Urgent Care)

2 photos of Violet Gamble © Lois Blackburn 2009

the art of nursing

In response to our new book Patience, Advance Nurse Practitioner, Fiona Roscoe has written:

There were times when I was reading this book that the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I felt my eyes prick with tears. With over 20 years clinical experience I value and embrace those qualities which we consider as a profession to be 'the Art of Nursing'. What this book does however, is give you 'the Art of patients'. Connecting with the meanings of the pictures and words has been profoundly humbling.

Fiona Roscoe RN DN MSc BSc(Hons) is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (Primary and Urgent Care)

William Blake and the Naked Teaparty RSVP

I've been thinking about handwriting and the importance of touch in what we do at arthur+martha. I guess Lois takes this for granted, because she has a textiles background. But as a writer, I rarely notice the quality of the writing itself, the mark. The shaky inked lines, written by older people in hospital beds, often speak as volubly as the poems themselves.

I'm kitterpawed, as they say in Ireland. I grew up in Northern Ireland around great religious anxiety that wormed thru all. For a short period when I was a child, I tried writing with my right hand because I thought it'd please God. No one told me to do it, but I picked up the idea half-intuitively. My older brother had been a lefthander taught to use his right.

Those childish words on a schoolbook page were important enough to be contested. A fingerprint, a cross to vote, a signature, your mark, an autograph. The witnessing signatures to a peace treaty, or an arrest warrant, these marks have import too. The human trace is the basic stuff of liberty and expression.

What happens when they are removed? We write now without handwriting: Microsoft or Apple our imprinteur.

Early this year, I edited an edition of the online magazine Ekleksographia. The work in it emphasises the handmade, the haptic. The makers of the work included are poets and artists who trace a lineage of lines thru to William Blake, the great handmaker in English lit. Bob Cobbing is of this family too, and the Outsider artists. And so too are the makers in PATIENCE, who fought bravely with pain and distress to leave their marks on a page for us.

Close-reading PATIENCE

Matt Dalby is one of several contemporary poets we asked to repsond to PATIENCE. Here, Matt traces a path between two pieces: Be Patient by Margaret Hargreaves, the poem that states the theme of the collection, and a self-exploration of Parkinson's Disease by Doreen Jones, Thee Thy Summer.

Margaret Hargreaves’ Be Patient includes the line ‘was a dressmaker’. There is a sense here that Margaret may no longer be who she was, or at least may feel she is no longer who she was. But it is not a sentimental, nostalgic, ‘when I was younger’ reverie. It is a lot more interesting than that. Here are skills and experience, here is something that makes the loss or impairment of capabilities with illness become more real. Here is something that is often hidden.

Anecdote. An elderly Muslim man in Trafford walking slowly around two parks supported on either side by two young women who appear to be his daughters. The sight is only striking because it is so unusual.

But this is to make assumptions. The assumption that ‘was a dressmaker’ refers to Margaret Hargreaves herself. The assumption of impairment through illness. The assumption that the women supporting the elderly man are his daughters. The only assumption for which there is any evidence is the first of these:

‘I call myself
a quiet person

was a dressmaker
if a stitch went wrong
I set it right
in two words, two small words’

But without knowing the author, and without knowing how the poem was put together it is a dangerous assumption to make. And even if it were a simple statement of fact about the author it only provides limited information. Many people could say ‘was a shop assistant’ and it would tell you precisely nothing about them.

Even so, this is a relatively straightforward poem in comparison to a poem like Doreen Jones’ Thee Thy Summer, which is much more fragmented. Thoughts are abandoned partway through, broken into fragments, and revisited later. The kind of fractures recur throughout the collection. Numbers play a large role in the text, as if they are fixed points within a generalized confusion:

’21 x pills a day’

‘fell 4 x times’

‘7 in morning’

Some numbers, especially 21, recur in the poem. So too does 7. The poem itself is arranged in six stanzas of seven lines in pairs across three columns, which might be read as three sonnets. But there is an ambiguity introduced by fragmenting the poem that means the poem need not be read down each column in turn running left to right. It is also possible to read each line across the columns, or the first stanza of each column in turn. Both of these reading give a poem in two halves of 21 lines each.

The first stanza gives a good sense of how the poem is constructed, and contains words and phrases that recur in the rest of the poem:

’21 x pills a day
make sweet thy beauty
parkinson’s you see
started vertigo
dizzy all the while
fell 4 x times = smashed face
started parkinson’s’

’21’, ‘make sweet’, ‘thy beauty’, ‘parkinson’s you see’, ‘started’, ‘vertigo’, and ‘parkinson’s’ all appear again. Even while broken into pieces the poem circles itself, its own areas of concern, giving it a unity and coherence it might initially seem to lack.

This does not seem designed to imitate any particular mental confusion so much as it feels like an act of resistance. Illness is defined more by medication than by symptoms, and both are an inconvenience. And here and there some aspect of a person (the subject of the poem? the author?) keeps slipping out. This is not loss but an ongoing negotiation with life and illness.

From the four sections I have read this idea of an ongoing negotiation with life and illness is a consistent theme throughout the book. For me this allows for a far greater human interaction and identification with the experiences of the authors than some sentimental veneration of their wisdom and remembrance of things past. To acknowledge the frustrations, pain, anger and limitations of age-related illness is surely more healthy than a vague sympathy. It does not make for a comfortable read, and the poetry is not instantly recognizable as the personal reminiscence and anecdote in conventional forms you might expect from a project of this nature. To my mind this is a good thing. It is more interesting and compelling for the reader.

It would be interesting to know whether the experience of creating the book was more satisfying for the participants than just writing a set of conventional personal reminiscences. Certainly one of my initial thoughts in response to being approached to comment on the book was that experimental approaches, being less codified, less familiar, might be more accessible than more conventional poetry. We all have an idea of what conventional poetry should look like, and that it has a number of rules that we do not understand. These preexisting ideas can limit what we feel is possible, and therefore what we ultimately produce. Whatever the truth, the more experimental approach has led to a book you are actually likely to read and return to, rather than pick up out of sympathy and never open again.


Matt Dalby is an experimental poet whose works take shape within multiple approaches and mediums, including sound and visual making. His blog Santiago's Dead Wasp is a key journal of experimental writing and related events in the North West of England, as well as a document of Matt's ongoing project. His extraordinary communal Mutapoem is world-embracing.

Reading Patience x 2

Responses to our forthcoming publication PATIENCE, a collection of art and poetry by older people in hospital.

I love the fact that your work nurtures older people and dignifies their experiences within the context of an environment that conspires to be demeaning and perhaps dispiriting. I especially appreciate the contrast of individual voices on found packaging such as medicine boxes - items which could assume disproportionate importance within a hospital or care home. Placing words and testimony on medicine packets, especially words that are so cheeky, wise and poignant, make me laugh, and smile, and cry.

(Penny Anderson, Journalist)

As a piece of work itself I think it has a real simplicity and tenderness that opens something very ordinary and yet profound in the reader. It makes you care, and makes you think for a little longer about these experiences and what they mean, to you and to them and to all of us.

(Amanda Kilroy, Medical Researcher)

green is the motivator

In the sun, outside Stepping Hill Hospital café, it’s my luxury to write with a cup of coffee beside me and to breathe fresh air after the wards.

As I look around it occurs to me that I don’t actually know where I am spatially – on all sides are extensions of the old hospital and extensions of those extensions. It’s an eyeline maze of brick blocks with plastic windows (contemporary) then 1960s/70s retooling of the ‘modern’, and then much older pre-war structures. Aircon systems make a huge insect drone left and right of me. Hospitals feel like industrial buildings, as participant/patient Raymond West pointed out a few weeks ago in his poem curtailed :

a hospital, an industrial estate

we are dead loss

green is the motivator to go

stifled in a wheelchair

raise your sight, your expectation

St Thomas, where I first worked with Lois in 2000, was much-feared by some of our oldest participants because it was the building that had been the Poor House. For some people who had confusion about their location in time/place it was terrifying to imagine that they were in that hated institution, though it had long since been converted to a hospital. Now that incarnation has gone too and the old nightingale wards have been wished away.

But what have we replaced them with? To ask Raymond’s question, why do modern hospitals look like industrial plant? Where are the real plants, coloured green, with flowers attached? What do these buildings tell us about our own attitude towards humanity, are we all simply bodies, like car bodies, products? Why do we mend ourselves in places reminiscent of industrial complexes, with little bits of art and a smatter of trees patched on as an alibi? Is it because we’re terrified of the places that we create hospitals in the form of a collective nightmare?

I’ve just come from interviewing ward sister Charlotte Moran who is responsible for E1, a stroke ward. The care and consideration that her team provides in those rooms is a testament to kindness. It seems to me, sitting in this brick vortex, that it is not the people who made the shell, but the people within who are the truly inspired architects.

PA-TIEN - ENCE!

Being back in the hospital environment forcefully reminded me of how these places can be simultaneously strange, estranged and uplifting.

The morning was spent in Ward 5 at Cherry Tree, where a group of patients made me welcome and we sat together around a dining table that also serves as elbow rest, pillow, reading stand, desk for nurses, sounding board for angry fists and, mostly, a meeting place. Ill health is of course one of the great levellers; with this comes a great mixing of strangers and neighbours. They come quietly, privately together into understandings that are among the most profound that humans share. They also annoy, scare, amuse, alienate each other.

”PA-TIEN – ENCE!”

On this day we talked about patience and how you get it. ("Patience, you learn under sufferance.")

Symbolically, the two people at the head of the table were at the poles of patience and impatience. Richard was bristling with energy and annoyance that he couldn't expel because his 83 year old post-stroke body was beginning to seriously slow with wear and tear. Angela had recently suffered a stroke and was still in the first stages of recovery, but she emanated calm. We chatted around and about the experience of being in hospital and what gets you through. How to observe the collapse of your own body and still not succumb to inner collapse. How to cope with "Waiting, waiting, waiting."

Partway through we were joined by staff member the ever-supportive Susan Hughes. She listened awhile, then told us about Want It Now, or WIN, an acronym used by early teens to describe the process of heavy-pressuring their parents into buying the latest clothing/computer game/hairstyle/generic product for them. The conversation turned to the childhoods of the patients - "We were never prepared for pleasure, we were prepared for work."

Several of the women described in detail cleaning the steps of their houses with the 'donkey stone' when they were very young. The grind of working lives, that began not with work but early childhood. And yet the happiness was there too, they insisted. So how do you make sense of that, I asked.

And in the midst of the replies, Angela raised one finger in the air, and pronounced very slowly but clearly: "PA-TIEN - ENCE!"

Interview: Dr Stephen Watkins

In June, Phil and I had a fascinating, insightful interview with Dr Stephen Watkins, the Director of Public health for Stockport PCT. We discussed the independence of older people, dependency, care and control, choice, being a carer, social roles and patience....

Dr Stephen Watkins
Interview
8th June 2009

There is a gap between healthy life and life expectancy – and that gap is what we must reduce. It’s important that we narrow the gap to delay the onset of dependency, so that people enjoy life longer.

About a year ago I began to find that my right ankle was stiffening. It became difficult going up hills. I told my wife: ‘I feel like an old man.’ I went to a physio, who recognised some restricted movement at the site of an old fracture. She said: do exercises and force through the pain. I followed that advice and have been fine, although I’m slower uphill. Now, if I had been of the mindset that says ‘You’re 58, your life is ending’ I would’ve stopped going up hills. And then gradually I would have stopped walking altogether – a downward spiral.

We need to fight off the expectation of dependency. People have a right to care and will be dependent to a point, but we also have to accept people living with a degree of risk. We don’t stop the young climbing mountains – we must also trust the choices of old people.

This is the difference between care and control. Even when people have accepted a state of dependency they don’t have to lose all choice. You mustn’t become dependent before you really need to – and also when you are dependent, you still should be allowed to make choices, be trusted to take risks.

There needs to be policy that supports this, that recognises there’s a duty of care, but no right to force care on people. These are patients’ rights. In the case of allowing risk, the nature of that decision needs to be recorded. It must be shown that an individual was allowed to make a choice and that there wasn’t negligence, just the allowing of choice. It isn’t actually caring for someone to take away their choice, for instance taking them out of the environment they want to be in.

Being a carer can have a devastating effect on people. Often a carer can become as damaged as the person they are looking after. Sometimes you wonder if it wouldn’t be better if they weren’t caring – if they were able to just visit and be a supporter, friend, advocate. Better that than being trapped in a situation where all the opportunity for loving interaction is gone. Who benefits from that?

These are very personal things, affected by people’s individuality. I’m sure there are carers who would offer support, even if their independence is devastated. But it’s important for statutory bodies to realise that these people need support and can be neglected. This is especially the case in caring for sufferers of dementia who cease to be the person they were. Then the carer is grieving that loss alongside the stresses of the care. I’d like to see more support for carers but there’s a resource issue. That’s why it’s important life expectancy grows, but healthy life grows even more and so the dependency group gets smaller.

That gap isn’t understood. The assumption is that the number of dependent elderly is getting bigger, but this is based on a misunderstanding. The first time the population aged dramatically was when the last generation of large families came of age. Previously there had been high infant mortality so people had large families to compensate. With improvements in medical help the babies lived, but people didn’t change their behaviour and that cohort of unmarried women (the men died in the First World War) created the first ageing population in the UK at the end of the 20th Century. Predominantly female, dependent. People needing care increased because it was a particular demographic with certain needs. People gained a sense that this is what having an elderly population means. But the gender balance has changed, the older men have not been in a war, they’ve faced less occupational danger. People are living to be older, happier, which raises the possibility of narrowing gap. The pension crisis remains but the care crisis doesn’t have to.

The maths is very striking. If healthy life expectancy is 60 and life expectancy 70, then one seventh of the population will be dependent. If healthy life expectancy is say 85 and life expectancy is 90 then dependency drops to one in eighteen. It is absolutely affected by what people do in their 50s, 60s, 70s – we have to get to the people who would’ve stopped walking when faced with my bad ankle. That’s the beginning of dependency.

We need new social roles. At present there’s no protection against unfair dismissal over 65. Things like this undermine the social vision we have to have if we are going to deal with having an ageing population. We have to have a healthy ageing strategy as an economic necessity.

We need patience in public health, because it takes people so long to listen to us. Churchill said the American government will always do the right thing but only first trying every other option. Reactions to public health advice sometimes seem a bit like that. How long did it take to get the ban on smoking? We are very accustomed to patience. Ultimately the health of the people is such a powerful social value that it will in the end prevail.

gummy legs and strokes

As part of the Patience project on Wednesday I worked at Cherry Tree Ward 5 (Rehabilitation ward) in the morning and E1 Stroke Ward at Stepping Hill in the afternoon. Another fantastic day, made the more poignant by the fact that it was my last day running art workshops (at least for a while) due to imminent maternity leave. In the morning, I spoke to the usual wide range of people- suffering from bowel trouble, an amputated leg, back problems, cancer...

We spoke about their condition, their response to being in hospital, their ways of coping. Again this week, I was amazed at how matter-of-factly people could speak of such sadness. For instance, the woman who had had her leg amputated: "Coping. You have to, no choice in the matter. You're here until fit enough to get home, so if you want to go home, put your mind to getting fit quick."
And.
"So had to have the leg off (she smiles) I could sit here and cry for eternity, but it wouldn’t put my leg back. Was a bit fed up at the beginning."

For the first time in ages, we did some drawing. Mary found it hard to tackle problems due to her low confidence - referring right back to childhood, not being able to draw - however she produced a really delightful drawing, which I feel she was quite proud of.


In the afternoon I worked with Stroke patients. I was able to give back typed versions of the pieces they wrote last week (this always seems to please people, to see their work looking formal, 'professionally' presented).

I was able to continue to develop conversations and building relationships with participants and to speak to new people. One gentleman was full of frustration and anger, he seemed so relieved to have someone to talk to: "Been sat on these statements for weeks to try and find the right minded person to speak to. 56 and I was a young 56, but its draining away from me... For the lonely it can be a nightmare in hospital, us and them. Worst thing is not knowing where the nightmare is... my nightmare - the staff changes - the shift changes, not everyone so understanding."

Artwork was in the form of plasters, stuck onto a part of the body that was participants wanted to fix, with letraset writing about their condition.



I'm going to really miss doing the workshops- its really humbling, exhilarating, tiring, inspiring and most of all an honor to share time with people and find out a little of their stories...

Lead soldiers & Stroke

As part of our new project Patience, on Wednesday morning I worked with older people at the Rehabilitation ward, Cherry Tree Hospital Stockport. Seven participants gave varying responses to a collection of toy lead soldiers I brought along to the session. My idea was to develop the theme of the 'brave soldier'.. and 'soldiering on'. Could these ideas relate to how we view our health? Participants chose an photographic image of toy soldiers, we selected a line from their text, which they in turn wrote on the photo, from which I made a badge for them. To my delight everyone seemed proud of their creations, and after photos I left them wearing their text/art.

In the afternoon, I met up with Jean Lally who was kindly offering her services as a volunteer. We had our first session at the Stroke Ward at Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport. Its always going into the unknown when you start at a new venue: the participants, the staff, the environment all are to be discovered.

We worked with three women, each one shared with amazing candor their experiences - one had been in hospital for 28 weeks and was fighting depression, God and her disability. She was full of anger: 'If I don’t hurry up I’ll be dead.'

Another women was the main carer for her Aunt, the determination to get home - so that she could resume her caring responsibility - was humbling: "To get well as soon as possible and get back to my Aunt that I care for and love - there's only the two of us- just want a normal quiet life, anything would do."

And then there was the woman who spoke in such a matter of fact way about her devastating conditions: "I have not only one problem, not only a stroke but Inclusion Bodies Myisitis- a form of MS or motor neuron a muscle wasting disease. There's no way to stop it, no way to help it, not for me anyway."

All three women shared such strength and determination it was inspiring, an honor and a privilege to talk with them.

New collection on-line

A new collection of text/art is on-line at http://www.flickr.com/ This is a collection of small objects that are part of peoples everyday lives, things they care about – objects that symbolize care. For example, a teabag, tissues, a pair of glasses, safety pins, pill containers… Each object carries a label written by the participant, discussing things they have lost on one side and found on the other. It is part of a bigger project we are developing called Lost & Found.

Talking Heads

Last Friday we had the wonderful opportunity to work with the group 'talking heads' at Walthew House. Walthew House http://www.walthewhouse.org.uk is an independent local charity supporting people in Stockport who are blind, visually impaired, Deaf or hard of hearing or who have dual sensory loss. 'Talking Heads' is a really welcoming group of people, of all ages and from all backgrounds, linked by their visual impairments. We where a group of 14, all of whom had fascinating insights into the discussion. I had prepared 2 pages of questions, but only managed to ask 4 of them! Phil wrote up notes from the conversation in a poetic form, which with the groups permission will be published on the internet, on paper and as spoken book, at a later date. Thanks again to all the members of 'Talking Heads' making us feels so welcome, we look forward to meeting with you again.