‘100 Flowers’ – New South Glasgow Hospital

Client: Ginkgo Projects for New South Glasgow Hospitals
Artists: Various
Location and Date: New South Glasgow Hospitals. 2015

New South Glasgow Hospitals is the largest capital healthcare project in the UK and forms the keystone within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s (NHSGGC) Modernisation Strategy. The hospitals provide new state of the art healthcare facilities and high-quality designed environments for a significant proportion of the population of Glasgow, and in some fields, for Scotland. The project brings together Children’s and Adult Acute services with existing Maternity, Neo-natal and Neurosciences services on one campus. It has the biggest critical care complex and one of the biggest Emergency Departments in Scotland providing a brand new 14-floor adult hospital with 1,109 beds. The new children’s hospital, with a separate identity and entrance, adjoins the adult hospital, with 256 beds over five storeys.

Ginkgo’s evidence-based programme for the Therapeutic Design and Arts strategy sought to enhance the patient experience and journey through developing creative processes and works of art and design that aim to connect patients, staff and visitors to the hospital’s social cultural and environmental context. Working closely within the project design team, Ginkgo Projects developed a programme which promoted patient dignity and distraction through exploring social, cultural and environmental connections. The strategy was produced in collaboration with two artists Donald Urquhart and Will Levi Marshall. Seven core projects were commissioned resulting in over 600 individual works of art. The approach was to integrate work that provided as much impact as possible within key navigation points, waiting and treatment areas.

Ginkgo Projects working with Gillespies (masterplanners and landscape designers) and Nightingales (architects and interior designers) are contracted by Brookfield Multiplex developed and delivered the Therapeutic Design and Arts Strategy for the New South Glasgow Hospitals.

Further information on the New South Glasgow Hospitals can be found at:
http://www.nhsggc.org.uk/content/default.asp?page=home_southerngeneralcampus
A clip from STV news: 22nd March 2015: A look inside the new Royal Hospital for Sick Children

The project involved curating and managing the 100 Flowers project outlined in the Strategy. 100 Flowers included four commissioning strands, with over 70 artists contributing new works for the collection now installed across the new hospital. Graham Fagen, James Winnett, Hanna Tuulikki and Alec Finlay each made a series of ten works. Thirty works were selected through open competition, with thirty works selected from work by people who participated in artists’ residencies (through Art in Hospitals, Plantation Productions and with Gorbals Youth Cafe) and ten existing works were purchased from artists and galleries.

100 Flowers Collection film by filmmaker Ruth Carslaw depicts the journey of the formation of the collection.