Creative Review

GP’s waiting rooms and hospital corridors aren’t generally designed as welcoming environments, and it’s a lucky person that isn’t familiar with the special NHS palette of greige – liberally applied across doctors’ offices and health centres all over the UK. But while there’s definitely a way to go, there are signs that we’re waking up to the ways art and design can improve things.

Arts organisation Vital Arts – which sits within the Barts Health NHS Trust – is at the forefront of this. Charitably-funded, it runs a hospital arts programme that commissions new, site-specific works by the likes of Morag Myerscough and Chris Haughton, as well as a participation programme that brings dance, music and literature and creative projects directly to patients across five east London hospitals.