Art for Life Appeal

DATE:  12 November 2008

PARTNERS

NHS Trusts, University Hospital of North Staffordshire (UHNS), Business Broker Project

BACKGROUND

Jenny Boulton, Arts Fundraiser, came to the business broker stand at Let’s Do Business in September, and at a subsequent broker appointment it emerged that the Art for Life Appeal was a project which the business brokers would like to get involved in. The business brokers offered sponsorship of the launch event on 12 November at the Manor at Hanchurch. 

The Art for Life appeal was established to raise money towards injecting different types of art into the new hospital buildings on the sites of the UHNS and Haywood Hospitals. Funding had been provided for new buildings to clinical priority standard, however, no funding had been provided for additional elements such as artworks and landscaping, which would help to make the hospital buildings feel more welcoming and less impersonal. Hence funding for this additional element was sought through donations, sponsorship, grant-aid and other external sources from businesses.

OBJECTIVE

• Creatively improving patient healthcare
• Give local businesses the opportunity to support and be involved in a worthy cause benefiting a big part of the community, as thousands of people filter through the hospitals every day
• Make hospital environments more customer friendly and less clinical
• Help patients to recover more quickly by reducing stress, depression and pain through integration of arts in healthcare

THE ACTIVITY

The evening event from 19.00-22.00 included:

• Chris Dawes and Mike Brereton, Chairs of SoT NHS and UNHS trust, explaining the new plans for the City General and Haywood hospitals on scale models which had been put up
• Music in entrance foyer of the hotel by teachers from Stoke on Trent Music and Performing Arts Service to demonstrate the therapeutic effect of relaxing music
• Scrolling images on laptops of art project ideas, reasons etc
• Networking

IMPACT

• 6 interested businesses attended
• Further businesses had expressed an interest in getting involved
• A large part of the whole local community would be helped by this, as there were 650,000 patient visits to the UHNS each year with a further 22,000 outpatient appointments at the Haywood Hospital
• Considerable savings on in-patient care and beds being freed up quicker, as pleasant surroundings created by Art for Life would help patients to experience less stress, recover more quickly, thus reduce recovery time and freeing beds up sooner
• Help the local economy
 

QUOTES