Special Events

Arts for Health ran their annual Summer Celebration at Redwoods on Friday 4th August. It was a chance to bring inpatients, their families and friends, staff and local artists and musicians together for an afternoon of fun, live music, refreshments, creativity, ice cream and re-connection!

The weather was very kind to us and everyone who came along really enjoyed themselves.  Arts for Health are hugely grateful to our various Trust teams who supported the event: management, AHP's, clinical staff, catering, estates, porters and of course all the musicians that played and the artist’s workshops.

We received some lovely comments and feedback about the day:

• ‘Totally great music!’
• ‘The ice cream! The weather! The company! Oh and the music too! It was a fab day!’
• ‘Great live songs, good refreshments, easy to talk to people’
• ‘It was a great afternoon, non-stop music etc….’
• ‘Absolutely fab! excellent music and arts,  ice cream - delicious!!’

A big thank you to everyone that took part in celebrating.

Colour & Crescendo is a project which took place at St George’s hospital, Stafford and The Redwoods Centre, Shrewsbury during May to October 2021. The project involved two high quality musicians, Richard Taylor, piano/composition and Sarah Whittingham, violin, both from Manchester Camerata Orchestra. Richard and Sarah came into our mental health settings to perform lovely and uplifting music over the summer of 2021. Their music brought joy and re-connection to our inpatients and staff after months of very little creative arts being allowed in the wards.

Alongside the music we also engaged two other artists: Debbie Todd, visual arts and Jean Atkin, poet. They worked with our activity co-ordinators to invite inpatients to express themselves about the pandemic, the last 18 months. Using colour, text, line and graphics, inpatients and staff created a huge range of beautiful and meaningful artworks on postcards - expressions of how it felt, what had helped them through and what were they most looking forward to. 

During August and September 2021, Richard and Sarah took the postcards away to devise and create two new compositions, inspired by the imagery and text on the postcards as well as their own conversations and connection with the participants on the wards.

In early October, with the new pieces written and composed, Richard and Sarah returned to the hospital sites to perform their new music for the first time!  We have also collaborated with Junction 15 in Stoke on Trent to produce a video of the project.