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Home From Home Poetry Exhibition Tours Care Centres in Manchester

Our Home from Home exhibition tours Manchester community wards this spring. It tells the story of people’s recovery journey from hospital to home and explores the working lives of NHS staff providing care at Manchester Local Care Organisation’s Intermediate Care and NHS Continuing Care Centres.

From September 2023 to January 2024, Lime and Edge Hill University’s Home from Home participatory art project ran over 25 creative workshops at Buccleuch Lodge, Delamere and Crumpsall Vale Intermediate Care centres and Dermott Murphy NHS Continuing Healthcare Unit. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council the aim of the project was to explore the realities of living and working in the community wards for both staff and patients, and how those experiences can be expressed through co-created work.

Writers Helen Harrison, Zayneb Allak and Rebecca Hurst encouraged patients, their families and NHS staff to explore the idea of ‘home’ using drawing, storytelling and creative writing and the Home from Home poetry collection features each writer’s creative response to these workshops. Sound artist Caro C and writer Kim Wiltshire also created the verbatim poem ‘There’s Nowhere Else (Quite Like Home)’ featuring the voices of NHS staff.

Dr Kim Wiltshire Project Lead highlights the benefits of arts for health participation.

An artist working creatively in a healthcare setting can tell us a lot about its culture and complement clinical outcomes, fostering mental stimulation and emotional connection, not only for patients but for staff. As NHS staff know, rehabilitation is about so much more than someone being physically ready to go home, it is about recovering confidence and personal autonomy or gaining as much of this as possible -creative interventions led by artists helps this journey and helps us understand healthcare settings in new ways. We have been made so welcome by MLCO staff throughout the project, who have worked with us openly and honestly and accommodated us into the routine of their centres. Thank you to all the patients and staff who have taken part in this project.

To find out more email limeart@mft.nhs.uk