April news

Some of the highlights from GO Create! at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) during April.GO Create! Artist in Residence – Dana Al Mazrouei

Emirati Artist Dana Al Mazrouei visited GOSH from 7-11 March 2016. She ran fun creative workshops in Wards and Departments across the hospital including International Private Patients and the Activity Centre.

During the workshops patients used a range of materials and techniques to create colourful, unique, circular artworks.

Each of these artworks represents a Circular Genome Visualisation and like in real Circular Genome Visualisations, the colourful pattern inside each is completely unique for every person, but always takes the form of a circle!

Dana will use the work created by patients during her residency as the starting point for an artwork for the new Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Diseases in Children. Dana’s artwork will celebrate the ground-breaking research which will take place at the Centre, opening in 2018.

GO Create! Learning Difficulties workshop with Swiss Cottage School

In February young people from Swiss Cottage Special Education Needs School in Camden visited GOSH for a sensory workshop led by artist Emma McGarry.

The workshop aimed to provide an opportunity for young people with learning difficulties to creatively and non-verbally share their experience of being in, and navigating around, the hospital.

The group played with a range of sensory materials such as whistles, lavender and foil, and discussed how each of them made them feel: excited, worried, happy, nervous? The group then explored public areas of the hospital and used the materials to signal areas they liked or didn’t like.

The young people especially enjoyed visiting St Christopher’s Chapel and the Reception area which they said was “bright and fun because of the fish!”.

The outcomes of the workshop will be used by Swiss Cottage School and Jim Blair, GOSH’s Intellectual Disabilities Nurse.

For more information on the GO Create! arts programme, please see gosh.nhs.uk/gocreate

follow us on Twitter @gocreateGOSH

or email gocreate@gosh.nhs.uk