Postcard Journeys.

Postcard Journeys is one of two permanent works commissioned for the Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital (RACH) as part of a Scotland's largest public art project in a healthcare environment. It was funded by Scottish Arts Council (SAC) and the ARCHIE hospital fund.
The key aims of the project were to identify a way in which an artwork could bring a sense of place and familiarity to the potentially hostile environment of a working hospital; and to implement the findings through making and installing site-specific artwork in the public areas of the hospital. The principal research questions were a concern with how landscape might be brought inside the hospital to transform a clinical environment and enhance feelings of well-being; and how personal experiences might be used to connect with both the ill and well, the children and adults.
The work, Postcard Journeys, was developed through postcard correspondence with over seventy hospital users and employees. They were each asked to nominate and describe a place near where they lived that they considered to be a landmark. I selected over forty sites to visit in a 1200 mile journey throughout the largest hospital catchment area in Britain. The landmarks were documented through photograph and text in the format of a postcard. Thirty lightboxes displayed the final images and words and aimed to capture the transient and visceral activities of hospital users' voices, personal landmarks and my journey.
Whilst this work references, and is situated within, the local geographical area of north east Scotland, it contributes to the wider debate on art as a transformative tool within the healthcare environment. The RACH art project has been used as an example of good practice by commissioning organisations and received the Saltire Society's Arts and Crafts in Architecture Award in 2005.