Co-designed artwork adorning the walls at Wren

Lived Experience Consultant Maria Bradshaw said the idea to formally bring artwork to the clinic was inspired by an existing appreciation and engagement with art at Wren. 

“We have art therapy groups and one-on-one artist sessions, and participants often decorate their rooms and communal spaces with their own work,” Maria said.  

“So bringing them into the mural process was inevitable. It came from them.” 

Together with artist Beci Orpin, Wren’s Co-Design team – made up of people with lived and living experience of mental health treatment and care – devised a theme for the series of works. 

“We started by looking at the colours already used in the building, the themes of women’s safety and mental health, and how we could encourage those ideas in the space,” Beci said. 

“We wanted themes that encouraged safety and recovery, and that’s how we landed on the ‘Garden of Recovery’.” 

Participants at Wren were then invited to take part in a ‘drop in’ artmaking workshop, where they created collage works and images out of paper. 

“Paper is widely available, easy to use, and translates well into mural form,” Beci said. 

 “Participants could come and go, make as much or as little as they liked, or just watch.” 

The images were then used as references by Beci in creating the final mural pieces installed across Wren’s Albert Road Clinic site. 

Maria said the collaborative process behind the artworks, in addition to the murals themselves, were appreciated by participants. 

“We had participants and staff in a shared space working alongside each other on something that wasn’t recovery-focussed, which speaks to the great culture at Wren,” Maria said. 

“It was about being together and doing art together.”