East Lothian Community Hospital

Juliana Capes – Cloud Gardens

These beautiful Jasmonite Sculptures can be found in East Lothian Community Hospital’s outpatient department courtyards.

Juliana created Cloud Gardens after researching the wild and rural landscapes that surround the hospital. The work explores, in sculptural form, an evocative moment in motion inspired by a flock or swarm. The dynamic placement of her jesmonite seed pods evokes repeating patterns in nature and natural phenomena like murmerations, cloud formations, waterways and the steady spread of plant life across the ground. Juliana has installed the works in each courtyard so they interact with boulders and pre-existing landscaping that was part of the hospital’s building design. Slivers of mirror in each element capture and reflect the changing light and movement of clouds across the sky. Distinct colour choices across the four courtyards are inspired by the changing seasons and reflect the environmental colours we experience over the course of a full year.

Natalie Feather – A Portrait of East Lothian

These beautiful framed photographs can be found in palliative care, Ward 1, at East Lothian Community Hospital.

Photographer Natalie Feather worked with staff, patients and families in East Fortune House before palliative care services were moved to the purpose-built East Lothian Community Hospital in Haddington. At the start of this sensitive project, Natalie undertook consultation and led participative art sessions with patients and families in the ward to explore imagery and colour. She then visited and photographed meaningful places that came up in conversation during these sessions, documenting them using medium and large format photography.

Natalie has produced large format prints, using a series of long exposures to create striking images to help people navigate long corridors within the hospital. Natalie’s early discussions with patients led her to create her artworks with empathy; using slowed down processes, printing at large scale and using a concentration of colour designed not to evade the ageing eye. Despite their substantial size, these works are understated, meditative windows to peaceful natural places that offer a quiet moment to anyone who needs one.

Alex Allan – Dodge, Bar, Beam, Ramp, Block 2

Alex’s eyecatching sculptures can be found in the grounds of East Lothian Community Hospital

Alex worked closely with physiotherapists from the East Lothian clinic to create a groundbreaking series of interactive sculptures designed to support physical rehabilitation. His colourful structures facilitate balancing, stepping and pushing and are used by clinicians at the site to support the work they do with patients of all ages. Alex also created a gathering space using concrete cast in the shape of building blocks. This playful space beneath the trees can be used by groups as well as individuals and provides a tranquil place to sit within the grounds.

Simon Crofts and Sylwia Kowalczyk – A Portrait of East Lothian

This collection of photographic works were created specially for East Lothian Community Hospital as part of our award winning art enhancement project and can be found in the main concourse, landings and outpatient department corridors.

Simon grew up in East Lothian, where his mother was a teacher, and both his parents were cared for in Roodlands Hospital which predates the purpose-built East Lothian Community Hospital. This extensive body of work is a non-conventional portrait of a landscape and community that provided a warm and welcoming home to the young family. Sylwia and Simon ran contemporary blurred portraiture sessions with hospital staff and toured the region on e-bikes, to collect the wealth of imagery they have used in this ambitious and intriguing series of montages. Their works interact playfully with scale, space and time to create imaginative images that spark curiosity, prompt the recollection of memories and surprise the viewer. Wartime defences, industrial slag heaps, forested back roads and epic coastal panoramas meet inverted skylines to capture the essence of East Lothian’s rich industrial, social, ecological and agricultural histories.

Katie Fowlie – Hide and Unsaid/Unspoken

Katie’s alluring photographic artworks can be found in the inpatient Mental Health Ward and Physiotherapy department in East Lothian Community Hospital.

Katie has created a beautiful series of photographic artworks for the hospital that depict glimpses of flowers and detritus from the forest floor. Her intriguing grid of circular pinhole photographs is at once a map of local forests, and also a tiny world of its own. Large scale lumens hang showing giant portraits of individual flowers, each selected for its symbolism: the Hydrangea extolling affection, and the sunflower loyalty and adoration.

Cobolt Collective – Coast and Hillside Murals

These spectacular painted murals can be found in wards 3, 4 and 5 at East Lothian Community Hospital

Cobolt Collective created a series of murals for the new hospital, each depicting nostalgic scenes of rural and industrial life in East Lothian in times gone by. A group of women stroll along the beach as fishermen haul their nets in, on one of East Lothian’s many historical harbours. A bustling Haddington high street depicts shops that have existed for generations, and a farm worker walks a ploughed field. These evocative murals are gentle in tone, and reminiscent of happy days spent working in and enjoying the East Lothian landscape.

Alicia Bruce – The Orchard: Final Fruit, Blossom Portraits; I ♥️ NHS

Alicia’s beautiful photographic artwork can be found in East Lothian Community Hospital’s Atrium, outpatient department and ward 1, palliative care and form part of our award winning art enhancement project at the hospital.

Photographer, Alicia Bruce, created a series of images that marked the transition from old services at Roodlands and Herdmanflat Hospitals, to the new East Lothian Community Hospital.

The Orchard at Herdmanflat Hospital became a focus for Alicia during her research period, the site having been in community use since the 19th Century and the apple trees having been a key focus of therapeutic greenspace activity for patients over the years. In conversation with staff and patients preparing to move to the new hospital, Alicia was told how the Orchard provided a welcome therapeutic focal point for staff, patients and visitors who, over the years, had admired the trees as they blossomed before collecting ripe fruit in the Autumn. Over a full year, Alicia painstakingly documented the final flowering and fruiting of the Orchard, prior to mental health support services decanting and moving to their new premises.

Alicia’s portraits of the heritage Orchard range from tiny buds and fragile blossom to fulsome fruit on ancient branches, sitting atop gnarled trunks that have been rooted in the earth for decades. These thought-provoking photographs speak to the resilience of nature and enduring cycle of life.

Fiona Hermse – Your Own Front Door

These stunning circular framed dyed silk works by patients can be found in the mental health outpatient department in East Lothian Community Hospital and form part of our award winning art enhancement project at the hospital.

Multi-disciplinary artist, Fiona, worked with inpatients and outpatients in East Lothian’s Mental Health Services for a year, spanning the transition from old services to new, as the new hospital was built. During her residency, she worked with patients using tactile materials and a range of creative techniques to build, paint and craft beautiful artworks. Fiona’s collaborative #TonicArts Craft Scotland residency was considered so valuable by staff, that they went on to seek additional funding to employ her for a further six months after this project had ended. Her work was particularly important during the transition to the new site as it provided patients with consistency and familiarity, as well as a creative outlet and talking space, during a period of change and upheaval.

Lindsay Perth – The Sanctuary

Lindsay’s peaceful and thoughtful sanctuary room and garden can be found just off the ground floor atrium and palliative care ward, ward 1, at East Lothian Community Hospital and forms part of our award-winning art and environmental strategy for the new hospital.

Lindsay collaborated with a series of local artists and makers to create The Sanctuary, designing it with a natural colour palette and materials, that provides a reflective space for people in moments of emotional intensity, or when some peaceful “time out” is required. A protective chair with high sides and back invites people to sit back and experience a sense of refuge. The deep blue roof offers emotional and physical shelter. Handmade coloured ceramic tiles by local ceramicist Charlotte Cadzow create whimsical cloud shapes in natural glazes and subtle impressions of insects and birds. Smooth wooden benches echo the East Lothian landscape, with gently rolling seats at different heights for all ages.

A zero waste table and two stools are made from leftover grains and botanicals from the brewing and distilling industry: malt, grain and juniper berries lend the surfaces a beautifully tactile and organic appearance. The Sanctuary Garden incorporates a path that meanders from the interior space to an outdoor oasis of considered planting and a quiet seating area. Metal canopies protect the sitter in wet weather, and highlight the soothing sound of rain.

Plants have been chosen with specific aesthetic, visual and aromatic qualities. Behind the seats are three birch trees that will provide privacy and screening, while tall grasses and flowers sway in the wind creating gentle movement and sound.

Lindsay has created a beautiful space that can offer sanctuary and refuge to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Zuzana Kerdova – Your Own Front Door

Zuzana’s bespoke designs for screens and curtains can be found in bedrooms throughout East Lothian Community Hospital, inspired by the East Lothian countryside and aiming to bring the outside in. These creative commissions form part of our award winning art enhancement project at the new hospital.

Fabric Designer, Zuzana’s calming bed screens take the forest as stylistic impetus, and depict a series of spaced out trees that give mental breathing space to people undergoing examinations or procedures in the hospital.

Additional designs, celebrating the forest in a variety of evocative greens, are applied to windows on the ground floor as dignity screening.

Alicia Bruce – Glasshouse

These beautiful framed photographs can be found in ward 3 in East Lothian Community Hospital.

The images are selected works from a collaborative series by photogapher, Alicia Bruce, and Florist, Jenny Bell Harman. ‘Glasshouse’ saw coastal Edinburgh windows house transient botanical installations using Jenny’s local flower and foliage arrangements. As well as creating an immersive portrait of place, Alicia’s moving portraits capture beautiful moments in time as the arrangements physically change and shift in response to the fluctuation of light and passage of time.

Bespoke Atelier – Your Own Front Door

Bespoke Atelier’s colourful surface designs can be found in ward 1, palliative care, and ward 3, mental health inpatients, on the ground floor wards at East Lothian Community Hospital, forming part of our award winning art enhancement project at the hospital.

Inspired by forms and colours found in nature, this work individualises each ward and creates journeys in otherwise featureless corridors for patients living in hospital. Their work includes interactive panels and resting spaces that evoke canopies of foliage in corridor recesses, as well as panels to feature names and photographs at the entrance to each bedroom.

Old School Fabrications

Old School Fabrications worked to a brief created by local children in partnership with Support from the Start and East Lothian Play Association to create child-friendly enhancements in East Lothian Community Hospitals Speech and Language Therapy clinics. The enhancements were funded by Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity with the support of Coldstones Charitable Trust, and commissioned and managed by Round Table Projects as part of our wider art and environmental strategy for the hopsital.

Speech and language are crucial to a child’s social, emotional and educational development and this project has ensured clinics are now welcoming, relaxing and can support this important work. The new clinics boast a welcoming approach thanks to relief woodland sculptures in adjoining corridors and soothing colours and furniture in clinics themselves. An interactive panel supports clinical work and a versatile mat and cushions allows for floor work to take place in a relaxed environment.