Lending Art Library for Palliative Care Margaret Centre
Margaret Centre Lending Library, 2022
Whipps Cross Hospital
Vital Arts has curated a collection of artworks for the palliative care unit at Whipps Cross Hospital. The Margaret Centre, established in 1987 at the start of the modern hospice movement, provides care for patients who are coming to the end of their life or have life-limiting disease.
In response to staff requests to improve the patient experience at Margaret Centre, Vital Arts developed an ‘art lending library’ so patients, carers and family members can choose which artwork to display in the bedroom. We produced a booklet with thumbnail images of each work, along with information about the artist and the artwork, which serves as a “menu”.
The reservoir of diverse and sensitively curated artworks are stored in an easily accessible chest of drawers in the centre’s common room. We devised a framing system that makes the wall-based worked easy to install and remove, so they can be changed weekly, daily, or even hourly, if so desired.
The aim of the project is to provide some agency to those confined to a single room during a particularly difficult period—or to their visiting families who may be spending long stretches of time with their loved ones in their final days.
The collection, which includes some works made specifically for the Margaret Centre, contains a range of uplifting and transportive imagery to provide a sense of hope and escape, with images of landscapes and natural vistas. There are also works that generate a sense of home and familiarity with images of domesticity.
Artists included in the project are: Jenni Allen, Sabine Beitzke, Clare Halifax, Erin Hughes, Paula Kane, Verity Keefe, Lauren Keeley, Peter Liversidge, Rosha Nutt, Simon Patterson and Freya Stockford.
