Paper Boats

I have been commissioned by NHS England to work with a team of Acute Learning Disability Liaison Nurses for across the country to create a new artwork celebrating the work they do.

Acute Liaison Nurses support people with learning disabilities or autism when they need to use acute services, such as hospital treatment. They play a vital role, ensuring the patients get the best possible treatment when needed.

Over the past few months, we’ve held a number of online meetings to discuss their role and how we might interpret it in an artwork.

Together we have created the Paper Boats project.

We started by talking about how the role is like a series of streams and rivers that converge, bringing resources from many different areas together. The streams and rivers meet many obstacles and challenges on the way that they eventually overcome or get round to ensure they keep moving.

We want people’s experiences to be central to this work, so we will house their stories in paper boats that we will float on streams and waterways across the country in a series of events.

I made a short film of the initial experiments in sailing boats around obstacles.