Research about loneliness

We started this project by researching loneliness and finding out that in 2018 Theresa May appointed a new minister of loneliness, Tracey Crouch. We learnt that more than nine million adults usually feel lonely, which is almost 14% of the UK population, but the figures could be higher. Labour MP Rachel Reeves said that “loneliness is no longer just a personal misfortune but has grown into a social epidemic.” This inspired us to create a ‘Ministry of Loneliness’ and to create an event based on this issue.

Pop-up building

We knew we wanted to create a space where members of the public could sit down, chat together and write on their postcards. This is why we created a wooden pop-up that would allow all those activities to happen and that also forced people to sit close to one another, to make eye contact and hopefully speak to people they didn’t know. We built it out of wooden panels that fit together and made a portable structure we could re-use for future events.

Stationary branding

The idea behind the stationary design was to create something that branded us at the ‘Ministry of Loneliness’ and had an official feel in the copy but also a playful visual aspect. We created a pattern of arms and hands on the back of the postcards that all connected to each other once the postcards were hung up next to each other, on the day of the event, to evoke a sense of community and helping one another combat feeling of loneliness.

Loneliness is a huge issue worldwide and sending a letter to someone in long term healthcare will not solve the issue, but it can help bring a smile to someone’s face and to start addressing this feeling that our society has turned into a taboo.

Results

• More than 700 hundred people attended the even
• 300 letters were written
• Future collaborations with London Secondary Schools to get more letters

Branding – Mathilda Della Torre, Sophia Luu & Akanksha Bhasme

Pop up design and build – Alex Clarke, Lucia Lanzalaco, Sophia Luu and Pod Hughes

Event facilitation – Participating Artists: Mathilda Della Torre, Lottie Bolster, Chang Gao, Sarah Graham, Laura Madeley, Kim Judge, Molly Bonnell, Gazbia Sorour, Michaela Wenkert, Akanksha Bhasme and Mariana Pena Montiero

‘Ministry’ Concept – Laura Madeley

Generously supported by the UAL The Post-Grad Community Project Fund.

The Importance Of Good Design – UAL

Ministry Of Loneliness – Artefact Magazine

Ministry Of Loneliness – London Arts In Health Forum

The Emerge Festival aims to bring galleries and museums to more diverse audiences, especially younger people who would never usually walk through their doors. They do this by hosting an annual weekend take-over of as many museums and galleries in London as possible. Each venue hosts a specific interactive event.

This meant that our event had to be:

• Drop in to account for open-access tickets
• Be completed in under 10 minutes
• Be accessible to a wide range of people
• Cannot contain any messy materials which would damage the hospital’s permanent collection
• Target 16-24 year olds

The old operating theatre itself is Europe’s oldest surviving medical theatre, was the perfect setting for this project as it only operated on female patients in the 1830s. We definitely wanted to find a way to incorporate this into our project.

Multiple visits to the collection

…to interview visitors, collection managers and observe people. It was clear that female bodies was a huge focus for the collection, and we thought this was a unique pull from the venue which we wanted to highlight during the festival.

Linking the museum collection to women’s health

We read lots of books, articles and sites in order to link some of the key aspects of the collection to the project. One thing which linked all the operations to every single person was blood. Blood is used in a lot of transfusions for operations, and had a lot of complex health implications.

Initial research from NHS Blood and Transport, who manage all public donations of blood in the UK, stated that:

• 67% was used to treat medical conditions including anaemia, cancer and blood disorders, such as sickle cell.
• 27% was used in surgery, including cardiac surgery and emergency surgery
• 6% was used to treat blood loss after childbirth

We wanted to focus on these facts and tailor them to women of colour.

Collaborating with experienced 3D makers

To produce a prototype from fully recycled materials. We had a very low cost budget, and wanted to ensure we made the most of it as possible, by collaborating with makers who had true upcycling expertise. This also allowed us to reach a wider audience by interviewing them about their knowledge of women’s health and experience in museums. We also got really inventive with copper tape, and old suitcase and some acrylic offcuts to make the core game components.

Bold illustrations with a human focus.

One thing missing from a lot of medical diagrams was a person’s agency. We wanted to bring that back as the main focus of the work. For this, we used a cross section of a person’s body, while also showing their face, hair, piercings, and things which make them an individual.

Quotes

“It’s astonishing to see how much donated blood goes to blood loss after childbirth – it’s literally saving two lives at once!”

VICTORIA AND ORI, 21

“Can we keep it?”

MONICA, EVENTS MANAGER, OLD OPERATING THEATRE

“Oh, this reminds me – I was going to register to give blood the other day but I forgot. Thanks for reminding me, this was so fun!”

RITA, 26

The insights

Many diversity and inclusion projects focus on celebrating external differences in people’s bodies, but rarely do we focus on the things we don’t see, like the clinical impacts of health and wellbeing. Taking a game which had a glossy and different exterior acted as a good pull for exploring internal health themes.

The Results

• 2 women signing up to donate blood on the spot – with the potential to help 18 adults each year
• A reusable operation game in the museum’s permanent collection which is used for children’s visits

At On the Mend, we are honest about our successes and our failures. We know that we can never fix every single problem with a single interaction. Below are some of our key reflections, and things we would change if we could repeat this work:

Illustration: Sophia Luu

Visual Concepts and Storyboarding: Mathilda Della Torre

Electronics: Minh Huynh

Woodwork: Minh Huynh and Sophia Luu

Research and Marketing: Rashmi Shankar

Photography: Michael Tigchelaar

Partners: Emerge Festival and the Old Operating Theatre. Special thanks to Svetlana and Monica.

Special Thanks to Josie at Machines Room and Peter from Solowood Recylcing for helping us sourcing materials and prop space!

Context and restrictions

• Can only be used for a one-day event
• Must be low cost
• Needs to adapt to a fast paced changing hospital environment, and easy to take down in an emergency

Observations

For the first week, we visited the hospital, observed patients, interviewed stakeholders and did trails of the current artwork on display. This also involved a visit to the paintings archive within the hospital, which contained hundreds of stored paintings! A lot of thought had gone into the placement of the paintings within the hospital. For instance, painted tiles from the original hospital site were placed on a corridor which linked the new wards to the chapel, symbolising the transitions to new places. We also noticed that for a lot of patients, the hospital artwork was the least of their concerns as they waited for test results and appointments. We realised we needed to find a way for the work to be disruptive and engaging.

Research about Charing Cross Hospital

Our work is always site specific, and we wanted to create an interaction which was very meaningful to the hospital, it’s specialisms, treatments, and the patients who attend there. After a lot of research and interviewing with stakeholders, we found that Charing Cross Hospital has the largest stroke rehabilitation and dementia unit in London. Both of these are conditions which affect memory. Strangely, we found that there is a strong link between smell and memory: 80% of people who show signs of poor smell will eventually develop dementia. We knew that there was a way to link these projects together and we decided to create some perfumes.

Perfume development

We returned to the hospital to decide which artworks were the most accessible and recognisable. We wanted paintings which provided a diverse range of recognisable environments.

Branding

We tried to incorporate as many sensory elements into our branding as possible, accounting for the fact that there were many patients who had different perceptions of the senses. This included:

• Physical perfume bottles in the same shape and orientation as the original artwork
• Scents directly mapped to the ratios in the painting e.g. a painting which had 90% apples would have 90% apple scent
• Matching visual elements within the perfume bottles and the original paintings

Delivery

We delivered the exhibition as a stand in two locations around the hospital over 8 hour blocks. The first was in the out-patient lobby, so we were able to capture staff, patients and visitors as they entered and left the hospital. We then toured the perfumes to the stroke and rehabilitation wards and spent an hour with the patients there. Each of the scents had take home tester strips which people could take home with them as a reminder of the event.

“Since my stroke, I have not left the hospital for months. I actually loved smelling the perfume based on London dirt because I even miss the smell of pollution outside! Thank you for bringing a piece of the outside in for me. ”

— PATIENT ON THE NEURO REHABILITATION WARD

“This perfume is vintage smelling, and reminds me exactly of the sorts of scents I used to wear when I went to dances in the sixties.”

— OUTPATIENT

“I have completely lost my sense of smell after a tumour. Although I can’t smell, the feeling of the bottles reminds me of perfumes I used to wear in my youth and the glamour of it all. It feels so nice to hold an object like this again”

— PATIENT ON THE STROKE WARD

The Insights

Clinical environments often strip the sensory experiences of daily life. By bringing smells of outside into the hospital in a controlled way, we create a hospital experience which is more familiar and friendly.

Results

• Working relationship with Imperial Health Charity
• 5 new memories for older patients

At On the Mend, we are honest about our successes and our failures. We know that we can never fix every single problem with a single interaction. Below are some of our key reflections, and things we would change if we could repeat this work:

• Perfumery and Branding – Sophia Luu

• Event Facilitation – Mathilda Della Torre

• Generously supported by the Imperial Health Charity (Lucy, Kate and Delphine)

Context

Mazars is a global auditing firm with more than 40,000 employees in 91 countries. Most employees are auditors and accountants working long hours on a number of high profile cases. As such, the outcome had to be:

• Able to engage hundreds of employees at once
• Adjust around time-poor employees and their schedule
• Not be completely reliant on a screen
• Encourage empathy when writing to an audience with very different circumstances
• Involve a variation of the ‘Ministry of Loneliness’ event, as this was why Mazars had approached us in the first place

Our methodology

Our first task was to find a charity to partner with. We wanted to target somewhere with wide reach, who also needed somewhere to grow. We spent two weeks interviewing charities to understand what their needs were, and created a package of proposals for Mazars staff to decide which group they would like to write letters to.

It was important for us to include a range of charities, for grassroots local groups to those with a national reach. In the end Sue Ryder was chosen because the hospice environment and how patients and hospice staff would need a particular boost at this particular time.

There were three main groups of users to consider when designing this project:

Mazars employees – who were time poor and needing a quick activity which would also make them feel like a part of a local community.

What did we do?
We wanted to really focus on sharing moments of positivity, being mindful that the employees were writing to strangers and might not always have been aware of their individual circumstances. The aim was to dissuade  We led some mindfulness exercises to ground the employees in the moment and created smaller breakout rooms to share experiences. To add a personal touch, we numbered each letter and introduced a tracking system, so that employees could see where their letter had ended up. This protected patient confidentiality while also making each person feel as though they had made a unique contribution.

Hospice residents – who had been in isolation since March 2020 and could not be around their friends and family.

What did we do?
We had to be very careful about the materials and objects we were sending to the hospices, guaranteeing that they would be free from traces of the virus. This ended up being a very difficult back and forth between Sue Ryder staff, hospice management and our design team. In the end, we created a template for the Sue Ryder staff to scan and make posters of the letters, which were then sent to each facility and printed as posters to hang up in communal spaces.

Sue Ryder Staff – who had to coordinate the sanitising, sending and distribution of the postcards entirely remotely.

What did we do?
We consulted with postage companies to create a bespoke posting service, and supplied a stamp to each employee so that they could send their letter back directly to the Sue Ryder staff without any delay. Each postcard had a QR code which allowed staff to track where the letters had been. We provided poster templates.

Quotes

“A reminder that helping someone else helps me as well. Also that I have a creative side in writing that I almost never use”

“I came away with a smile and the presentors were lovely”

“The variety of work Sue Ryder do was much greater than I realised and how big of an impact something small can have”

“I enjoyed thinking about the simple things in life that bring me positivity and hopefully inspire others too through my letter”

Mazars Employees

These projects can often be very time consuming for charities, especially when we only have 1 full time staff member in the corporate partnership team and I personally only work around 1 full day a week in this department. So to have your input and the on the mend team dealing with the delivery and logistics of the project meant that the project was completed to a high standard and on time.

Sue Ryder Staff

The Results

• 100% of people said they would consider returning to another On the Mend workshop.
• 95% of people found the event very positive, and 100% found the workshop positive overall.
• 325 sign ups
• 200+ attendees
• 181 letters received

Sent to the following hospices:

Leckhampton Court Hospice, Cheltenham

Manorlands Hospice, Oxenhope

St John’s Hospice, Bedford

Thorpe Hall Hospice, Peterborough

Wheatfields Hospice, Leeds

Duchess of Kent, Reading

Palliative Care Hub, Wallingford

NCC The Chantry, Ipswich

NCC Dee View Court, Aberdeen

NCC Lancashire, Preston

NCC Stagenhoe, Hitchin

At On the Mend, we are honest about our successes and our failures. We know that we can never fix every single problem with a single interaction. Below are some of our key reflections, and things we would change if we could repeat this work:

Misaki Hata – Workshop design and facilitator

Minh Huynh – Letters distribution and logistics and facilitator

Mathilda Della Torre – Letter design and facilitator

Sophia Luu – Charities outreach and project coordinator and facilitator