Ged Quinn participates in 'Hospital Rooms' project at Torbay Hospital

Hospital Rooms has partnered with Devon Partnership NHS Trust to create artworks for three inpatient mental health wards at Torbay Hospital. Hospital Rooms is an arts and mental health charity that commissions extraordinary artworks for NHS mental health inpatient units across the UK, believing in the power of art to provide joy and dignity and to stimulate and heal.

The project has taken place at Beech Unit, Haytor Ward and the newly-built Salus Ward, with five artists allocated to each ward. All three wards provide care for adults living with acute mental health needs, with Beech looking after older people and Haytor and Salus caring for adults aged 18 and over. At Beech, artworks have been created by Catherine Cartwright, Max Eastley, Tom Hammick, Mark Jessett and Katy Richardson; at Haytor, the artists are Samuel Bassett, Jacqui Hallum, Simon Ripley, Tanoa Sasraku and Huhtamaki Wab; at Salus, they are Cass Agazzi Brooks, Andy Harper, Amy McCarthy, Ged Quinn and Anna Chrystal Stephens.

Central to the creation of the new artworks was a series of workshops hosted by the artists, during which staff, patients, care providers and members of the wider community with lived experience of mental health difficulties explored a theme or an artistic medium, collectively generating ideas for the final artwork.