CHISENHALE GALLERY
YOU'RE THE BOSS
2008 - 2010
Vital Arts and the Chisenhale Gallery worked on two-year artists-in-residence project at the Royal London Hospital. Artists were invited to work collaboratively for mini-residencies on the children’s wards. They worked with young patients, their families and hospital staff, in particular the Play Specialist Team, to produce artistic outcomes that were shared with the wider hospital community. The project’s title comes from a mission to give patients decision making opportunities through art making and aims to stimulate interaction between patients whilst acting as a pain relief device.
CHISENHALE GALLERY: You're the Boss
Dear Diary
Artist Daniel Lehan
Summer 2010
Please click on the above icon to view the diaries,
“The project is really interesting – it’s obviously very successful in allowing the children to express themselves, and it’s really great to gain an insight into how patients feel – it would be wonderful if it could be continued” Doctor
Funded by Tower Hamlets
CHISENHALE GALLERY: You're the Boss
Rock- Paper- Scissors 21
Artists Yara El-Sherbini and Simon Woolham
Summer 2009
The first residency saw young patients, their visitors and the Play Team devise RLH RPS 21: a non-contact combat sport, based on the recognisable format of Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS). Twenty-one hand gestures (power hands) were devised in response to the hospital environment, with players deciding on which gestures defeat others or are defeated during game play. A poster was then designed showing the rules of the game and the 21 possible gestures, and the game was played on wards between patients, with a final ward-to-ward play-off tournament.
CHISENHALE GALLERY: You're the Boss
Open All Hours
Artists Yara El-Sherbini and Simon Woolham
Easter 2010
The second residency introduced the young people to OPEN ALL HOURS: a game, film and poster project using fantastical characters created by young patients in collaboration with the artists. They re-created the recognisable game of ‘Guess Who’ using images of patients and staff to re-design the 24 characters using photoshop. By putting the young people into the game, the participants could be anyone or anything they wished, devising a space for fantasy and language as they considered how to describe the characters in a Guess Who tournament that spanned all four inpatient paediatric wards. The tournament acted as a starting point to create a series of short films about the fantastical characters.
CHISENHALE GALLERY: You're the Boss
How Patient An Inpaitent Are You?
Artists Daniel Lehan and Daniel Wallis
Winter 2008
The first residency focused on cross‐ward communication, by inviting the young people to communicate with each other by stenciling questions and answers on to boards, which were then delivered between the wards by the artists acting as couriers. This process became like a pre‐email, highly personal, back and forth letter delivery service for young people in wards across the hospital providing the participants with the opportunity to make new friends and share experiences.
CHISENHALE GALLERY: You're the Boss
Royal London TV
Artists Daniel Lehan and Daniel Wallis
Summer 2009
The second residency focused on working with the young people and their families to develop a series of TV excerpts connected to life within the hospital. Taking inspiration from the everyday life in a hospital setting, the resulting twenty‐minute video art work gave the appearance of channel hopping through TV stations, drawing parallels with contemporary culture and forging connections between young participants across the hospital and beyond.
CHISENHALE GALLERY: You're the Boss
Read All About it
Artists Daniel Lehan and Daniel Wallis
Easter 2009
Please click on image to download the Read All About it newpaper.
The third residency saw young patients produce a newspaper entitled Read All About, which reveals the hospital from a young person’s perspective through a montage of confessions, articles, pictures, games and more. Distributed among the staff, patients and visitors in the hospital, this subtle intervention drew attention to the challenges facing young people in the hospital setting.
