Our mission
Vital Arts supports the acclaimed health care offered at Barts Health by delivering outstanding visual and participatory art projects across our hospitals.
We provide patients, staff, and visitors meaningful cultural encounters, improve wellbeing, and reduce health inequalities among our communities. Engagement with our projects offers inspiring and mind-opening moments which in turn makes time spent in our hospitals more positive.
With five hospitals in east London - The Royal London, St Bartholomew’s (Barts), Mile End, Whipps Cross and Newham Hospital - serving over 2.5 million people, we view these important civic areas as ideal places to introduce new audiences to contemporary art.
Our history
Founded in 1996, Vital Arts has developed an international reputation for producing ambitious and award-winning projects, and pioneering arts programmes that encourage interaction with contemporary art, support wellbeing, and transform the clinical experience.
Initially, Vital Arts sat within the Nursing Division, as promoting creativity was recognised as a way to support wellbeing. The first artist-in-residency projects starting in 1997, with live performances joining the programme in 1998. Exhibitions at The Royal London Hospital began in 1999, followed by exhibitions at Barts.
An early milestone project, completed in 2004, was the redevelopment of the West Wing at Barts with an ambitious series of embedded artworks.
In 2009, Vital Arts developed art strategies for new buildings at Barts and The Royal London, with the theme of "Bringing the Outside In". Artworks evolved from deep engagement with the histories and contexts of each hospital, and were commissioned in collaboration with patients and staff. Since the creation of Barts Health in 2012, Vital Arts has extended its reach to bring art to all our sites. The first permeant arts commissions at Newham were delivered in 2016, at Whipps Cross in 2018 and at Mile End in 2023.
Our impact
Vital Arts has commissioned thousands of artworks, and developed a collection of more than 2,500 objects that enhance the environment across five hospitals to support our 19,000 staff and the 2.5 million people of east London who use Barts Health NHS Trust.
Working and collaborating with patients, clinical staff, artists and community group members, we have delivered over 70 different engagement projects and more than 500 individual workshops, involving 1000+ patients, in our hospitals.
From antenatal to palliative care, our collaborative programmes provide routes into the arts, supporting patients, staff and visitors to think about how their health and wellbeing could be positively impacted by creativity.
Our team
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Catsou Roberts
Director
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Jo Knox
Participation Manager
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Carmel Woolmington
Technician and Installation Lead