A Picture of Health (and Wellbeing)

It was great to see so much joy and happiness last week as the GCSE and A-level results were announced. I tried to avoid the discussions about possible results creep, or whether the assessments were fair and equal. Whilst it is important to acknowledge the messages around inequalities and the possible impact on grades achieved, I just thought it was a really good news story. After the last 18 months, I’d say well done to all those who got what they wanted, and to all those who perhaps didn’t quite get where they wanted to be, don’t despair, and don’t ever quit.

I can’t remember much about my school days, and I think my school experience was pretty rubbish. Probably might fault as I wasn’t remotely interested in studying. My ambition was to become a lumber-jack. Although I did work in the Welsh forests for a while, I never became a lumber-jack. It was only in later life that I took an interest in my education, and have revelled in pursuing lifelong learning opportunities ever since. I still have gaps in my knowledge. For example, I didn’t know there was such a word as ‘incel’ until this week, when I read about the tragic events in Plymouth. I’m still struggling to really understand what the term represents.

Although I experienced a poor early education, I think I may have done okay. I successfully trained to become a registered nurse, gained an MBA, and was awarded a PhD. I have been a trainee supermarket manager, window dresser, blacksmith administrator, nurse, university Dean, doctor, professor, and on retirement, a Chair of a NHS acute hospital. Not bad for some one who left school with just a couple of O-levels (the precursor to GCSEs), one of which was art. So, if you or your children didn’t get the grades they hoped for, tell yourself or them never to give up hope, there are lots of different opportunities out there to help you find your way in life. And to this day I still have a Husqvarna chainsaw in my tool shed.

Despite gaining an Art O-level, I’m not an artist. I can’t paint, draw or sculpt, but I am creative, and have an eye for good design. I have long enjoyed a love of surrealism, and have used this passion in my teaching, writing and conference presentations. Alongside the celebrations of our young people's successes, there were also a couple of different stories about art itself in last week’s news.

The first, of course, was the erroneous claim that the Prime Minister had spent £100,000 on two paintings for number 10 Downing Street. There was the usual media outrage at this expenditure. The main thrust of which was the challenge that with so many people struggling financially across the UK, and the very real possibility of benefits and other support disappearing, was it the right time to be buying paintings? The fact that the purchase of the paintings was nothing to do with the Prime Minister didn’t seem to matter. There was more anger expressed about his alleged purchases, than anything we have so far seen over the 130,000 deaths from Covid 19 in the UK. The paintings were actually purchased by the Government Art Collection, a body completely independent of any political affiliations. It cares for over 14.500 works of art, and regularly adds to the national collection.

In, any event, my feeling is that any government worth its salt, should be spending money on benefits and art and the wider expressions of culture. Sadly, many public sector organisations that choose to spend money on the arts almost inevitably attract the kind of outrage seen this week over the Downing Street paintings. Remember the outcry there was a few years ago when Tameside hospital spent some £18,000 on steel giraffes. Last year York Hospital were criticised in the media for spending £21,000 on works of art for their new endoscopy unit. However, there are other more enlightened examples to be seen, have a look at this website for the Oxford Health Foundation Trust and the work of their artists in residence. It is fascinating and something we are exploring in my own Trust.

The other art story in the news last week featured the street artist Banksy. This well known artist from Bristol has maintained the mystery of his identity for many years. His works of art often appear overnight and always, at their heart, contain a message about how he interprets society’s problems and issues and where he stands in relation to these. The reason he was in the news last week centred around speculation as to whether a series of new Banksy style paintings seen in a number of seaside town on the East coast were actually created by him.

He uses a stencil and spray paint cans to achieve his artwork, an approach that allows him to get his painting onto a wall quickly and effectively. It is an unusual technique, and some more traditional artists don’t see his work as art at all. I’m not one of them. That art O-level I got; well, it was based upon a portfolio of collages I had created. I used the images, colours and words of others to create my own pictures. Like Banksy, but much more naively, they were all expressions of my view of the social world I lived in. Unlike Banksy, my body of work has long ago disappeared.

Eventually Banksy confirmed that he was indeed responsible for the new works of art at the different seaside resorts. Last week, he posted a video clip on Instagram he called ‘A Great British Spraycation’ which shows him in different places on a summer road trip, and actually working on some of his art.

In March of this year one of Bansky's pictures raised £16.7 million for UK health charities at auction. The painting, on canvas, depicted a child playing with a toy nurse, instead of the superhero toys Batman and Spiderman, seen peeking out of the child’s toy basket. He presented the original painting titled Game Changer, to the University Hospital Southampton, at the end of the first lockdown. 

It had a note attached to it saying: ‘Thanks for all you’re doing. I hope this brightens up the place a bit, even if it’s only black and white’. The original was hung on the hospital wall for a few months, before being replaced by a copy, allowing the original to be auctioned off. It was a wonderful gift, given in acknowledgment of those who had given so much for others. The money raised will see the benefits of his gift touch the lives of many more folk.