Royal Aberdeen Childrens Hospital (RACH)
The aim of the Artists Work in Public Places scheme is to support and encourage innovative, collaborative and integrated approaches to public art. This project was recognised as having the potential to meet these aims to a high degree. The project has also provided an opportunity for children and young people to experience the arts and interact within a range of high quality commissions within a healthcare environment.
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NHS Grampian provides healthcare for the Grampian region and the Northern Isles. NHS Grampian is responsible for the development of the new Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital (RACH), which provides a range of healthcare for children up to the age of 16 within the Grampian region. |
The new facility (17,000 square metres over five floors) which opened in January 2004, replaces the previous children's hospital built in 1929, and is sited on the existing hospital campus with a direct bridge link to the main Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
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It was the intention from the start of the project to collaborate with artists.
The RACH Arts Group was set up in 1998 and was made up of RACH staff, Grampian Hospitals Arts Trust (GHAT), PACE, the ARCHIE Foundation and MRT architects.
In October 2001, the group commissioned arts agency PACE to assist them in the project's development; in the first instance to draw up an arts strategy, consult with stakeholders, source funding and facilitate the artist selection process. |
PACE have developed a number of award-winning schemes: artworks for the Edinburgh Dental Institute and BT Scotland headquarters at Edinburgh Park. Current projects include: internal and external artworks at The Community School of Auchterarder, curating artworks for a new wing of Great Ormond Street Hospital, London (due for completion in spring 2006) and curating artworks for a new Child Development Centre for Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London.
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Through the work of Grampian Hospitals Arts Trust (GHAT), the arts have played a very prominent and important role within Grampian healthcare services since it was set up as a registered charity in 1986
As well as successful commissioners of artworks the Trust programmes a range of exhibitions within the Royal Infirmary's art gallery.
The aim is to enhance the environment of healthcare buildings throughout the NHS Grampian region. |
NHS Grampian applied to the Artists Work in Public Places Scheme in two phases for a contribution towards the cost of the inclusion of a team of artists to work in collaboration with the RACH Design Team, including the project architects Mackie Ramsay Taylor of Aberdeen. The aim was to create a unique, holistic and family friendly new children's hospital
In July 2002 a development grant of £30,664 was awarded towards the cost of working up a strategy for the involvement of artists and concept designs within the following areas of the hospital:-
- External and internal entrances
- Concourse
- Courtyards
- Main circulation routes
- Main waiting areas |
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Following completion of the development phase, a grant of £303,176 was awarded in March 2003 as a contribution towards the cost of installing the artists' designs.
As well as grants from the Scottish Arts Council Lottery Capital fund, the project attracted funding from Aberdeen City Council, NHS Grampian and the Archie Foundation, a local charity founded to raise funds towards the hospital project.
The project has resulted in the inclusion of a series of site specific artworks by 15 artists, as detailed below:-
- The external approach to the Children's A&E Department, which is open 24 hours and is the main evening entrance, is signalled by 'Space Place' - a grouping of brightly coloured aluminium poles by Ally Wallace. Some of these poles incorporate pin-points of fibre optic lights, giving the illusion of stars at night. Ally has also created a series of coloured windows throughout the hospital. The colours cast strong reflections onto the floor over which children can enjoy jumping in and out of the colours and seeing the world outside through different tints.
- The main day entrance is a bright and airy double height concourse which features wooden sculptural seating by local artist Allan Watson. Made of marine plywood, the modular units have four different styles which can be used as conventional seating and played upon by children. Four of Allan's seats are also located outside the main entrance.
- Within the main public waiting areas, including A&E and out-patients, a series of smart seating units can be seen, designed by Matthew Hilton, former head of furniture design for Habitat. These practical, useable units are made up of three different shapes that can fit together in various formations.
- The main out-patients waiting area looks out onto an enclosed courtyard. The courtyard houses 'Slinky Tower' by Jim Buckley. This 12 metre high stainless steel column features a spiral of coloured fibre optic lighting which comes alive at night with five colours winding up the spiral - like a colourful line drawing in space.
- Facing the lifts on the first floor is 'Button Wall' by Jane Watt. The local granite buildings inspired the artist to produce a glistening wall of 58,500 polished pearlescent buttons embedded into a four metre long curved wall. The repetition of coloured circles also echoes cell patterns found in the body. Jane has also produced 'Postcard Journey' - 30 light boxes enclosing striking photographic images which describe the artist's 1200 mile journey around the hospital catchment area (Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, the Grampians and up to the Orkney and Shetland Isles) to locations suggested by staff, patients and visitors to the hospital.
- Within the A&E waiting area, Michael Brennand-Wood has produced 'Mr Sandman' - a kinetic floor to ceiling panel - incorporating nine portholes through which the viewer can see a variety of toys and medical items when revealed by sand which is rotated by machinery. Michael has also produced 'Shakin All Over' - a collection of eight boxes located along a corridor, each containing a different collection of images, giving the sense of a strange museum. The collections reference the habitat of the north east of Scotland and include images of shells, fish, birds and fragments of maps.
- From the A&E waiting area a second enclosed courtyard can be seen. Within this courtyard, artists Dalziel + Scullion have created 'Ontological Garden' - a 'garden' of stylized trees - a rowan, Scots pine and two silver birches. The 'trees' are influenced in design both by traditional illustrations in children's fiction as well as the imaginative world of computer graphics. The artists drew on many different resources and processes to create the trees, including scientific molecular models for the red berries of the rowan.
- Perched upon an external courtyard roof are a series humorous creatures with animal forms and human characteristics created by Lucy Casson, creating a 'picnic' scene called 'Feast'. This group of coloured plaster figures can be viewed through the overlooking wards and treatment rooms.
- The colourful signage throughout the hospital, as well as the main and A&E entrances was designed by Lucy Richards. Lucy devised the coloured squares acknowledgements system (each donor, however big or small their contribution, will find their name on the colourful squares located along the main ‘hospital street’ on the ground floor. The smallest donation was 25p and largest was £222,000!)
Lucy was also invited to explore ways of connecting up the different spaces of the expansive hospital interior: wall colours, floor finishes and columns. She came up with a number of different solutions – abstract shapes in colours and patterns inlaid into the flooring vinyl at key points throughout the hospital; fun facts and graphics on corridor walls, and in WCs and baby changing areas containing amusing and interesting facts about the different parts of our bodies; colourful columns containing facts about the body such as blood groups, percentages of broken bones and minerals in the body.
In Therapy and Outpatients, Lucy produced a series of lenticulars with tongue twisters such as 'red lorry yellow lorry', and interactive words such as 'hop skip'. In Radiology and A&E departments, Lucy worked with photographer Nick Veasey, to create two-way lenticular photographs of objects revealing their x-ray image. Nick Veasey is a photographer and film-maker who works with x-ray and scientific equipment to create unusual imagery that captures the hidden inner lives of everyday objects.
- Robin Wilson is a panographer. He turns photographs into panoramas through a computer process called ‘stitching’. For the hospital, he has created panoramas of local scenes for three of the parent sitting rooms to create a sense of place.
- Two-way lenticular portraits can be found on corridor walls created by Andy McGregor. Each portrait (of local children from Mile End Primary School) depicts the child wearing a straight face which is then contrasted by an image of the child pulling a face or expressing emotions triggered by cues such as ‘bang’ and ‘ouch’.
- Three paper constructions based on traditional Scottish children’s cradle songs can be found by the clinical lifts on the ground floor. The original musical scores for Rest My Ain Bairnie, O Can Ye Sew Cushions and the Skye Boat Song are deconstructed, delicately incised and suspended in layers within a perspex box by artist Georgia Russell. A good way of exposing old and almost forgotten Scottish nursery rhymes in a contemporary context, the work appeals to people of all ages.
- Julia Griffiths-Jones work is concerned with the translation of textile techniques such as stitching, quilting, patchwork and embroidery into a wire and metal form, thus changing its original nature and function but retaining the meaning and decoration. Julia created Healing Apron, the simple shape of the nurse’s apron worn in the 20s and 30s, filled with flowers, herbs (particularly referring to illnesses suffered by children), hearts, a bird and a child with open arms; and Thank You Dress made from a combination of drawings made by local school children (as part of the Young Adviser’s Group). One child stated that you need flowers, chocolates, juice and a get well card to help you feel better.
The Royal Aberdeen Childrens Hospital's Lottery funded artworks recently received the Saltire Society's Arts and Crafts in Architecture Award 2005. Tony Franks, Convener of the Saltire Society Arts and Crafts in Architecture Panel, described the Project as 'the most successful example of integrated public art in architecture that the Panel have seen in many years'.
Jackie Bremner, heading the scheme, said 'This is a wonderful recognition of the imaginative, high quality and diverse range of artworks commissioned for the new Royal Aberdeen Childrens Hospital.
The award is the result of an exciting, collaborative five year adventure involving local school children, staff, the design team, contractors, Grampian Hospital Arts Trust, art agency PACE, and 15 artists from throughout the UK.'
A second phase of the project recently started focusing on the wards and clinical departments.
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Want more information?
- To view images of all the artworks go to the PACE website
- A special 72 page full colour publication on the arts project has been produced. For further details or a copy of the publication, please email Juliet Dean or phone 0131 620 0445.
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