Our mission

Paintings in Hospitals is the UK’s leading creative health organisation. It exists to support the health and wellbeing of people who need it the most, through the life-enriching power of art.

We work in partnership with patients and carers to transform and humanise clinical environments using quality art from our own collection giving hands-on support and collaboration – delivering practical workshops and sessions with patients, carers, staff and other vulnerable people. We work in libraries and other community settings to embed social value including expanding our work into more diverse communities. We engage with policy makers, politicians and other key groups to improve funding and education for creative health projects to help them understand the value of the work we do.

Established in 1959 we are recognised by the Department of Health, NHS, and Arts Council England as a leading provider of creative health. Six decades of experience and expertise has enabled us to maintain a unique art collection of over 3000 works which, alongside projects and engagement activities in hospitals and care settings, contribute to the healing process.

We offer three distinct programmes:
1. Our Loans programme allows all types of health and social care organisations to borrow art from our collection. We currently provide art for hospitals, hospices, care homes, GP surgeries, healthy living centres, dental surgeries, mental health facilities and many more kinds of care space. To enable patients, service users and carers to get the most from our artworks, we offer bespoke creative workshops and activities that provide the knowledge and confidence to engage with visual art. These activities often involve patients and carers choosing the artworks they want for display, giving them a say in their own care environment and care experience.

2. OASIS (original art for the socially isolated scheme) uses our collection to work with those who are socially isolated either through loneliness, geographical distance, disability or those at the end-of-life stage.

3. Art Meets Book taking place in public libraries enables marginalised groups to come together to use our collection to reminisce, make their own art, write poetry and develop storytelling which breaks down barriers and fosters a sense of community.

Find out more about working together needs to change. Here are our objectives for 2024 – 2027

1. We will design and implement high-quality arts interventions. We will do this by:
> Working with the Integrated Care Boards through the National Centre for Creative Health and their Creative Health Associates Team
> Roll out an accredited training programme in community curation of our collection
> Find resources to fund a community project manager
> Map priority places to roll out our programmes and assess likelihood of funding
> Align our delivery framework with that of the Creative Health Quality Framework developed by the Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance
> Recording and conserving the legacy and social significance of our art collection
> We will uncover the stories of undocumented and lesser-known artists, their cultural heritage, and lived experiences to better understand the diversity of artists and artworks we have in the collection

2. We will work toward the development of public awareness of the benefits of creative health. We will do this by:
> Publish our Impact assessments agreed by NESTA and disseminate our monitoring and evaluation learning to our networks
> Develop a checklist for ensuring social value in all that we do
> Improving our Branding
> Developing our digital and social media strategy
> We will profile our Trustees and staff to enable them to function as thought leaders using their experience and skill sets on relevant subjects
> We will provide media training for staff and Trustees

3. We will identify and remove barriers to accessing the arts, including marginalised communities and those in geographically isolated areas. We will do this by:
> Developing our ‘place making’ initiatives
> Find multi-year funding for Oasis and Art Meets Book
> We will make our collection available on digital platforms such as Bloomberg Connects and Google Arts & Culture
> We will train participants in community curation of our collection to enable a local and wider geographical reach

4. We will facilitate the development of partnerships and partner working between the health, social care and arts sectors. We will do that by:

> Collaborate strategically with local authorities to enable PiH to lead creative health approaches within their place making strategies
> Work with our NHS partners to further understand the benefits from creative health and the work that PiH does
> Continue to work with the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance
> Maintain a dialogue with government departments including DCMS and DHSC
> Engage with London Arts and Health
> Support the work of the Campaign for the Arts
> Work with museums and galleries to partner on creative health initiatives using our collection
> Further develop the relationships with ICB’s through the National Centre for Creative Health and their Creative Health Champions

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

World Health Organisation, 1948