As part of my HNC in Art and Design we had a Graphic Illustration unit. For this we were given a live brief with the client being the NHS Care for The Elderly Unit at Wishaw General Hospital. They wanted the students to come up with two designs chosen from 8 given themes. There would be 8 murals in total.
From primary and secondary research the murals were to be recognisable imagery, bold in colour and animals and children were popular themes. These walls were to be used a part of the patient’s therapy as a road to recovery and to promote memory as most of the patients suffer from dementia.
I chose the themes garden and shopping. My garden was based on fond memories of my gran and how she fondly talked about hanging the washing out. She would talk of the days she would go to the Steamie to do her washing and then those easier days when she had her own washing machine at home. I researched the increase in homes having washing machines and this was post-war time.
I also looked up imagery based around the 60s for the patterns and illustrative style as most of the patients would recognise and remember this imagery because of their age.
For the theme shopping I looking into the history of Wishaw and discovered that King's of Wishaw was once a thriving factory making sweets. So, I decided to focus on this as I discovered many people had worked there or had family connections to King's.
I decided to create 3 panels. The first the sweets being made. The favourite sweet of the time was the Oddfellow. My second image was outside of a traditional sweetie shop with the bottles of sweets in the window and my third image was inside the sweet shop. In this design, I again used imagery form the 60s and children and animals featured in the panels.
I wanted my murals to tell a story as the patients walked along and that there would be interesting talking points to promote memory.
I am delighted to say both of my murals were picked and have just been installed in Wishaw General Hospital Care for The Elderly Unit in June 2021.
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