Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People

2021 - 2022

“The new Pears Maudsley Centre will be a vibrant and welcoming space for young people and our local community and will feature modern therapeutic outpatient facilities, an inpatient ward and a state-of-the-art research lab as well as two floors dedicated to the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospital School. By involving young service users and their families in its design, we have ensured the building provides age-appropriate spaces and works hard to ease anxiety.”
- South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM)

In 2021 I was commissioned by Bethlem Gallery, as part of SLaM’s arts strategy for this new building, to work with a group of young people with lived experience of mental health difficulties to consider how artwork will be commissioned for the new site, and what kind of artworks they would like to see.

I first designed a pack of creative prompts that provoked enquiries into particular themes that they may want to explore in the artwork, alongside colours and textures that may help other patients to feel safe and relaxed. The packs were sent directly to the young people’s homes with a range of art materials and a sketchbook for them to respond to the prompts in their own time.

I subsequently facilitated a number of online sessions with the young people to explore and deepen their ideas. Their creative responses and thoughts directly informed the briefing documents that went out to artists to create artwork for the building.

Click through on each of the briefs below to see on what the young people decided they wanted the artists to focus on for different parts of the building.

All illustrations for the artist briefs are the work of talented artist Sarah Carpenter.