Campbelltown Arts Centre, Campbelltown Hospital and Health Infrastructure NSW are collaborating on an ambitious Arts Health Project that will place community, culture and creativity at the heart of the second stage redevelopment of Campbelltown Hospital.
This unique collaboration sees artists invited into the capital program to bring new ideas that will inform the detailed designs of the new hospital.
Artists Erica Seccombe and Nicole Monks have been commissioned to date on the project, working directly with architects, designers and the community to bring new ideas that will inform the design of the new hospital.
Ms Seccombe has found growing evidence through academic empirical studies that by incorporating nature into a hospital environment to create places of reflection or interaction, the healing process can be enhanced.
Nature, or the sense of being in contact with nature, can relieve some of the stress and unease that comes with a hospital experience.
Working collaboratively with a range of stakeholders, she has developed a series of responses that create experiences of nature throughout the hospital to support a feeling of wellbeing and bring nature into the hospital through wall designs.
Ms Monks, an artist of Yamatji Wajarri, Dutch and English heritage, developed a series of creative outcomes that incorporate and consider local Aboriginal histories, languages, stories, culture and contemporary life.
Working collaboratively and respecting, acknowledging and being responsive to cultural protocols and practices, she worked with Aboriginal elders, experts and community members to develop a series of responses that create opportunities for meaningful connections with land and culture within the built environment.
The outcomes of this engagement resulted in the presentation of multidimensional narratives centering Dharawal culture, while providing opportunities for positive and memorable encounters for patients, carers, community and staff regardless of age, cultural identity, gender or ability.
On July 31 the final prototype for the artworks was delivered to the hospital project control group and elders.
The public artworks will include a welcome stone, large lyrebird feathers fabricated from metal suspended in the hospital foyer and a healing circle.
The Campbelltown Hospital stage two redevelopment is scheduled to be completed in 2023.
