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Another fun day at Pontypridd’s Y Bwthyn

On 17 May I visited Y Bwthyn for stage two of the consultation process with the patients and staff of the hospital. The aim of this visit was to get a better understanding of the types of plants that everyone wanted to see in the foreground of the murals I am designing and show everyone how my design ideas were developing.

On the day I ran a workshop using wild flowers, grasses and ferns I found around the cottage hospital.  We printed fabric using the heat transfer technique, which offers quick and very effective results. The workshop was accessible to all; both staff and patients got involved

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Here staff and patients are constructing their prints using leaves and grasses found around the unit

I set out to run two one-hour workshops. However, the workshop went on longer than planned, as gradually almost every member of staff at work that day created a print! Eventually the heat-press cooled down and it was wheeled off on a hospital bed back to the boot of my car and home to Bath!

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Patients that took part in the workshop

At the end of a very busy day everyone went home with an individual piece of cloth. Some patients spoke of framing their fabric to make a picture and others planned other creative projects, such as purses and small bags.  The results were beautiful, I’m sure you will agree…

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A printed outcome created by one of the patients.

I had a fantastic day at Y Bwthyn Cottage Hospital back in May and it really helped me to get a much better understanding of just how special the unit is to both patients and staff. I got to know the patients much better and I really enjoyed showing everyone my sketchbooks and initial designs.

As ever, many thanks to arts consultants Willis Newson, for involving me in this fantastic project.

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The artwork made will inspire the art being created for the Y Bwthyn NGS Macmillan Specialist Palliative Care Unit which Macmillan Cancer Support is building with Cwm Taf University Health Board in partnership with the National Garden Scheme. Follow the link to read Part One of this story.

Kate Bond

This blog post first appeared on the Seam Collective blog. Thank you to Kate for agreeing for us to use it.