Art for Alder Hey in the Park: Bereavement Garden
Deadline: October 29, 2013
Art for Alder Hey in the Park: Bereavement Garden
The Commission
Art for Alder Hey in the Park is seeking an artist (or artists’ group) who will work with the parents and siblings bereavement group, and landscape designer, to design and make a work of art, and/or series of works, for the new Bereavement Garden in the new Hospital. This Bereavement Garden is adjacent to the mortuary and is a space for families who have only just been bereaved and come from the mortuary and counselling rooms.
Introduction and Background
The new Alder Hey Children’s Health Park is a unique concept in which the 100 year old hospital will be replaced by a new 270 bed hospital designed and built by ‘Acorn’ and a new public health park created on the old hospital site. (Laing O’Rourke Construction with Building Design Partnership Architects). Click here for the latest news.
Alder Hey will be a welcoming healing environment in which the art helps enhance and improve the patient experience and enables a personalised delivery of healthcare’ for children and young people.
A lead artist, Lucy Casson, has led artistic wayfinding, and developed the ‘sense’ of the hospital linked to the environmental/nature interest of the Health Park. This commission is informed by Alder Hey’s commitment to artistic practice and artist collaborations that will support children, their families, staff and visitors: http://www.alderhey.nhs.uk/departments/arts-for-health/. A Children and Young People’s Design Group helps inspire the artistic vision, and is consulted on designs. In this case the Bereavement Group is the key consultee.
Commission Details: OPEN COMPETITION
The work(s) are to be designed and made for the Garden. We ask that the artist embrace the qualities that we believe make Alder Hey special – warmth, being cared for, welcome, and in the work sensitivity, simplicity, high quality of thought and execution, and willingness to go the extra distance. The landscape design include sensory plants and shrubs that attract bees, birds, butterfies.
Suggestions for the artist from the group have included:
- A gentle sounding (bubbling) water sculpture
- Changing lights
- Seat with canopy – i.e. somewhere screened to sit
- “Something that I can ’do‘ – like the act of lighting a candle in traditional churches”
It is worth saying that, such is the immediacy of the bereavement when families come into this garden, the group explicitly reject the idea of having any texts or words in this garden.
The theme of nature, or the environment is strong and in line with the environmental/ecological theme of the overall Art Strategy.
Further details, including notes from meetings held with the Bereavement Group, plans, etc will be provided at the shortlisting stage.
SUBMISSION DETAILS
At this stage we require a digital portfolio and c.v. of relevant work and a letter expressing your interest in and appropriateness for this project:
BY 29th October.
Art for Alder Hey in the Park will shortlist by 5th November.
Further details will be supplied to shortlisted artists: November (date to be agreed).
Art for Alder Hey in the Park plan to appoint by mid December 2013
Outline Work Schedule: Work will take place throughout 2014 including design, making, and consultation with all stakeholders. Installation (tba) Spring 2015.
Budget: c£12,000.00 inclusive of fee and materials.
Please submit your work digitally to Acorn Art Consultant.
Lesley Greene
Art Consultant Art in Alder Hey in the Park
[email protected]
Tel: 01452770018
Tel: 07760258160
