2 October 2023
Immersive light installations are bring trialled by patients in Gloucestershire for a research project to improve mental health and wellbeing.
The Submergence areas use hundreds of lights with soothing sounds created by a local arts collective.
They are installed in the Oncology unit in Cheltenham and the Children’s Centre in Gloucester.
If successful its hoped the study will lead to a bigger project across the country.
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Sophie Dawe is recovering from Hodgkin Lymphoma for the second time and has spent time in the installation in Cheltenham.
“For me colours are everything,” said Sophie, who works as an artist. “It just shifts your mood instantly because I’m so attracted to colour and shapes, especially with the effects, it’s amazing. I could walk around here all day.”
The feasibility study, which has been funded by Innovate UK, has been asking patients and their families how using Submergence has made them feel.
“We’re hoping that having art installations like this in healthcare will help us to provide nice experiences for people when they’re in an otherwise bad place,” said Anoushka Duroe-Richards, Arts Coordinator for Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust.
“Ultimately we’re also hoping that has an impact on their well-being and and mental health and may also help to reduce NHS costs.”
James Groves and Lizzie Dreczewicz are two cancer patients who were invited to try the installation at the Oncology unit where they were treated in Cheltenham.
James said: ” When you’re in hospital you feel lonely a lot of the time so its good to come down and try something like this and distract your brain a little bit.
“I’ve been in a few different hospitals during the time I was having my chemotherapy and when its a place where its more colourful and there’s art it makes it more comfortable for you.”
“It’s calming. I like looking at the lights and the different colours,” Lizzie said. “Its very relaxing, I feel calmer.”
The installations at the hospital are smaller versions of the original Submergence exhibit which has toured the world for the last ten years.
It was created by Squidsoup, a Cheltenham arts collective that fuses art and technology.
The company has partnered with the NHS in Gloucestershire on the research project, which its hoped, if successful, will lead to a bigger roll out across the country.
“It’s humbling and quite awe inspiring,” said Dan Pearson, Squidsoup’s Creative Technologist. “I never thought that we’d be having a conversation about how our work could get in to these spaces to make people’s lives different.
“A lot of people look at art and say, as wonderful as it is, what’s the purpose of it? But we like to look at how our technology and art together can expand the spaces that it can exist in and the purpose that people think it exists for.”
As well as patients and families, the research team and encouraged staff to use the installations too.
For many, who often have to deal with difficult and stressful situations, just a few minutes have made a difference.
Laureen Plommer, a matron in the oncology unit in Cheltenham, said: “Even 30 seconds or a minute, you glaze over and experience the sounds, the separation from your day.
“It really makes all the difference. Having some time to ‘turn off’ your brain, to reset and refocus is invaluable.”
