Honeyscribe: Plant Pharmacy Studio
Building on the work developed during a previous Creative Arc-funded project, Honeyscribe's Plant Pharmacy Studio provided full day free drop-in creative encounters for staff at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital in the TLC Café. At a time where staff morale is low across the NHS, and recruitment of healthcare professionals is causing nationwide concern, this project offered a creative way to bolster staff wellbeing of the hospital community as the clocks went back and many staff arrive and leave in the dark; Honeyscribe delivered engaging and contemplative sessions to boost staff wellbeing during their shifts which were led by skilled professional artists from Exeter who are experienced in working in complex NHS hospitals across the UK. Due to availability all the sessions were delivered by Lucy Runge and Amy Shelton - so was delivered by 2 x Exeter based professional artists. The project engaged 182 attendees/participants, reaching staff from all departments; this number went up to more than 500 attendees/ participants on the receipt of additional funding, secured as a result of the Creative Arc funds.
The ‘Plant Pharmacy Studio’ was set up in the hospital’s largest staff rest area, so that people could participate for as long as they had and received expert tutorials in how to paint flowers from life, create pressed flower cards and botanical sculptures from a preserved collection of local wild and cultivated flowers from across the hospital campus, the University of Exeter Grounds and local gardens.
In addition to the interactive sessions where staff connected with the making of botanical cards and artworks, the Plant Pharmacists dispensed handmade botanical cards featuring real pressed samples of medicinal plants associated with healing. They achieved this through working with 4th year Medical Students who helped create pressed flower cards to distribute in place of stickers via the flu jab nurses. This approach was tested during the pilot project and found to have a powerful effect engaging people across the hospital, filtering through the staff community and enticing staff to seek out and engage with the activities. Plants and placemaking are also inextricably linked, and this project will help advocate for green cultivated and biodiverse spaces across the NHS trust site.
About Honeyscribe
Led by founder and Artist/Artistic Director Amy Shelton, Honeyscribe uses creative practice to draw attention to the intricate relationship between biodiversity, environmental wellbeing and human health. By creating artworks and imaginative participatory programmes that invite a re-evaluation of our relationship with the environment, their work helps connect people to the places they live, to our shared ecology and natural heritage.
Working across multiple forms and disciplines and in collaboration with a wide range of artists, writers, scientists, botanists, conservationists, researchers, architects, designers, Honeyscibe’s work focuses on how art can be a potent tool to reconnect people to the natural world and one another.
Honeyscribe work with NHS Trusts across the UK, devising projects and creating artworks that bring the natural world into the interior spaces of healthcare settings through biophilic design to help support staff and patient wellbeing. Recent NHS projects have been delivered at UCLH London, Dyson Cancer Centre Royal United Hospitals Bath, University Hospital Southampton & Great Ormond Street Childrens' Hospital.