Fantastic patient artwork celebrated with special Arts Awards event

Our talented patients have recently had the opportunity to celebrate their artistic creativity, with many entering artwork into the Koestler Awards 2018.

The Koestler Trust are the UK’s best-known prison arts charity who have been awarding, exhibiting and selling artworks by offenders, detainees and secure patients for over 50 years. The awards inspire individuals to take part in the arts and transform their lives.

The theme for the awards this year was ‘Connections’, with participants – including 145 entrants from St Andrew’s - invited to submit work made in various mediums, including fine art, craft and design, performance and audio, film and animation, and writing.

Arts@StAndrew’s hosted an Arts Awards event held at our main building on Tuesday 13 November to bring together everyone who entered their work into the Koestler Awards.  One patient explained: “Koestler helps me with motivation, commitment and a sense of relief to create things for a purpose”, and another added: “I want to show my talents to others and have possible opportunities for my work to be seen or sold”.

Thomas Love, Visual Arts Technical Instructor at our Essex hospital, commented: “I found that patients who often struggled to maintain focus on a project were motivated by the Koestler Awards. Patients completed their entries over the course of several weeks; researching, planning and completing the work. To see patients engage in one project over several sessions was very rewarding. The Koestler Awards also noticeably improved the confidence of patients when they saw the high quality work they could achieve. Many patients have since expressed interest in entering the competition next year.”

One of our patient’s art work has been chosen as part of the Koestler Trust exhibition, which is on now at the South Bank Centre. The artwork was one of 220 chosen from 7,000 entries.

Tina Heeley, Arts Manager commented: “It never ceases to surprise me the huge amount of artistic talent we have here at the Charity. The submission this year from our patients into the Koestler were both outstanding and inspiring, all made possible by the dedicated support from the arts team which allow the patients to achieve their creative ambitions.”

Visit the webpage for more information about Arts@StAndrew’s.

Pictured: a small selection of artwork entered into the Koestler Awards.