Customers and staff of Trindlemoss Day Opportunities in Irvine have recently been working with interns from Glasgow School of Art, with the aim of creating some pieces of artwork that reflect the changes experienced over the past couple of years at the centre, as well as people’s hopes for the future.
The service, which provides a wide variety of supports to people with learning disabilities, opened in January 2020 and has been going through a programme of significant staff, culture and practice change, informed by collaboration with a range of partners including Healthcare Improvement Scotland.
As a means of capturing this journey – and made possible thanks to funding via the NHS Endowments fund – interns Victoria Jamieson and Claire Lobban joined the team at Trindlemoss for five weeks, working with customers and staff to generate a range of artworks reflecting the journey of Trindlemoss to date, as well as the aspirations of staff and customers.
The project culminated in an art installation in the reception area that was shaped from the themes identified throughout their engagement work over the five-week period, as well as branding that will be used throughout the building and on related materials.
Victoria and Claire started out by exploring the ways in which they could encourage staff and customers to participate in the process and share their views and feelings, coming up with a range of engagement activities including a colourful board game design that encouraged people to open up in a way that was also fun and non-invasive.
Throughout these activities they were able to learn more about individuals’ experiences at Trindlemoss so far and how they were adapting to change, with a number of key themes emerging from this engagement work. The values of Empowerment, Opportunities, Exploration and Connections were then identified, with the artworks produced reflecting these.
Intern Victoria Jamieson, who has since joined NAHSCP as an Engagement Officer focusing on Learning Disabilities, as well as broader issues around inclusion and accessibility, said: “We began our project by taking the time to get to know the customers and staff at Trindlemoss.
“Everyone is unique and has their own story to share, so we began to consider ways in which we could encapsulate this energy! We tried to be inclusive and adaptive in our approach to engaging with customers so that everyone could get involved and have fun while reflecting on their time at Trindlemoss.
“It was important to us to be able to give Trindlemoss a visual identity – something that truly reflected everything it represents. We came up with the idea of using a butterfly, where the cocoon represents the safety bubble that Trindlemoss’s four walls can provide.
Through the staff’s encouragement and skills development, each and every customer can transform into a butterfly and bring their energy back out into the community.
“120 butterflies of different sizes and colours were created for an installation in the reception area – one to represent each customer. To make sure our work could be enjoyed by all, we incorporated multi-sensory elements throughout the reception redesign, inviting users to get hands on and enjoy the tactile art!
“Our four values are also displayed in braille so that everyone can read them.”
Beyond the artistic outputs delivered by the internship, there has also been immense richness and value brought to conversations and the Trindlemoss working environment.
The Learning Disability Service hope that similar valuable projects can now be rolled out to other parts of the service in the future.
“It was important to us to be able to give Trindlemoss a visual identity – something that truly reflected everything it represents. We came up with the idea of using a butterfly, where the cocoon represents the safety bubble that Trindlemoss’s four walls can provide. Through the staff’s encouragement and skills development, each and every customer can transform into a butterfly and bring their energy back out into the community.”Victoria Jamieson – Intern and Project Coordinator
