Functionsuite was initiated by Artlink (Edinburgh and the Lothians) Hospital Arts programme and the Lothian Hospital Arts Consortium. Support for the programme comes from NHS Lothian Patients Endowment funds, the National Lottery and the Scottish Arts Council.

Initiating and supporting practice-led research between artists and the hospital community, Functionsuite aims to introduce artists to specific individuals or departments to set up working relationships. The hospital community numbers between 20,000 and 30,000 potential collaborators at the following four hospitals:

The Royal Edinburgh Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Morningside,Edinburgh. The Functionsuite office and accompanying studio space are located there in the Andrew Duncan Clinic. The office has digital video production and editing equipment with internet access and the studio is used to hold regular workshops. Artlink has worked here for over 10 years involving patients or staff in nearly every department including the Head Injuries Unit, rehabilitation wards, Care for the Elderly, the Young People’s Unit, Intensive Psychiatric Care and Admissions Units. Artlink runs a dedicated gallery space called the Link Gallery.

A brief history of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.
The first appeal for a new hospital was launched in 1792 by Andrew Duncan. A government grant in 1806 funded the purchase of land in the Morningside area. The foundation stone of the Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum, designed by Robert Reid, was laid in 1809 and the first patients admitted four years later. In 1842 the William Burn building was added to accommodate pauper patients and others who could not afford the higher rates of board. This was known as ‘West House’ in contrast to the original ‘East House’. W Mackinnon, F Skae, T S Clouston and other subsequent superintendents ensured an international reputation for the asylum.
Craig House was added in 1894. The hospital was renamed the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Mental and Nervous Disorders in 1922 and the Jordanburn Nerve Hospital was opened in 1929 for the treatment of informal patients. The Children's Clinic began in 1930. In 1948 the hospital became part of the Royal Edinburgh and Associated Hospitals. The Andrew Duncan Clinic opened in 1965, the Young People's Unit and the Alcohol Problems Clinic in 1968, and the Jardine Clinic in 1982. The hospital is currently being redesigned and is due for a rebuild in 2008 as Edinburgh’s second public–private partnership hospital (the new Royal Infirmary in Little France being the first).

Please visit the website for full details:
www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/histheal/hospital/reh.html

www.show.scot.nhs.uk/lpct/content.htm

St John’s is a modern general hospital in Livingston, West Lothian. There are several other small hospitals and units scattered around West Lothian. Artlink has worked in Tippethill House (elderly), Bangour Village (psychiatric), the Young Persons Unit (psychiatric). Artlink has a dedicated gallery on the top floor of St John’s as well as being responsible for locating many artworks around the hospital. The Fusion (Artlink’s last hospital arts lottery project) had artists working with staff in the Plastic Surgery Unit and individual patients in the Bangour Unit, Intensive Psychiatric Care. Prior to the building of St John’s the general hospital was located at Bangour Village.

A brief history of St John’s Hospital at Howden
St John’s was built in 1989 at the heart of Livingston, a new town built around an influx of factory developments. West Lothian Healthcare NHS Trust is an integrated trust providing both primary (GP and community) and secondary (hospital) care for the population of West Lothian, part of West Edinburgh, and, for some specialist services, for the south-east of Scotland. It is unique among Scottish trusts in providing such a broad range of health care, as other trusts provide either primary or secondary care, not both. It consists of one large acute hospital, St John's Hospital; a psychiatric hospital, Bangour Village Hospital (see background below); two small hospitals for the elderly, St Michael’s Hospital and Tippethill House; and a wide range of outreach services, community health and GP services, based in a number of associated premises including some 12 health centres and clinics.

Please visit these websites for full details:
www.show.scot.nhs.uk/wlt/index.asp

A brief history of Bangour Village Hospital
By the beginning of the twentieth century the problem of mental illness in Edinburgh had become acute, and the need for a new psychiatric hospital was pressing. Situated 14 miles from Edinburgh in Bangour, near Broxburn, the hospital design was based on the Alt-Scherbitz asylum near Leipzig in Germany built on the utopian model of a village including a railway station and green, but the initial buildings were constructed hurriedly and were very basic temporary structures. The first patients from the Royal Edinburgh Asylum were transferred to Bangour in 1904, and the hospital was officially opened in 1906.
In 1915 Bangour Village Hospital was taken over by the War Office as a military hospital and its patients were transferred to asylums around the country. The numbers of staff and beds were increased substantially to cater for the influx of wounded soldiers who began to arrive in June of that year. By 1918 the hospital had reached a record capacity of 3000 patients, crammed into wards, huts and specially erected marquees. Bangour reopened as a psychiatric hospital in 1922. After the war, in commemoration of the vital role played by the hospital, Bangour Village Church was erected and opened in 1929.
However in 1939 the hospital again became the Edinburgh War Hospital, with an additional annexe, which became Bangour General Hospital. In the 1950s Bangour Village Hospital began to take patients from West Lothian as well as Edinburgh, finally ceasing to take Edinburgh patients in 1974. Bangour Village Hospital was sold for real estate in 2002 with most patients being redirected to St John’s Hospital and placed back into the community as part of the government’s Care in the Community programme. Early in 2004 the hospital buildings were used as a set for The Jacket, a Hollywood film produced by the American actor George Clooney.

The Royal Infirmary was an old-established general hospital located in the centre of Edinburgh until 2003, when it moved into a custom-built building in Little France on the outskirts of the city. It is the first hospital of its kind in Scotland (it was funded by a public–private partnership) and although Artlink has no dedicated exhibition space here it holds art events and discussion groups. Paul Rooney’s Psalm was performed here and Functionsuite artists will be taking up residence in the Accident and Emergency department and researching bereavement with the chaplaincy and pathology departments. Fusion saw artists working in the following departments at the old Royal Infirmary: the Sleep Centre, the Eye Pavilion, the Simpson’s Memorial Maternity Unit (Neo-natal Unit), Cardiology, the Chaplaincy the Liver Transplant Unit and Haematology Department.

A brief history of the old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
The Royal Infirmary site at Lauriston was purchased in 1869 (a full 20 years before Edinburgh was lit by electric street lights!). Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary made a major contribution to the development and history of medicine. A list of patients admitted during the hospital's first years shows that reasons for admission included hysteric disorders, bloody flux, tertian ague, and melancholy. Notable individuals that were part of this world-famous hospital community included Florence Nightingale, who urged nurses at the Royal Infirmary to keep their wards ‘clean and wholesome’, Dr Joseph Lister, who introduced antiseptic conditions during surgery, and Dr James Simpson, the first obstetrician to use chloroform as an anaesthetic in labour. Over the last 100 years the Simpson Memorial Maternity Unit has ushered the majority of Edinburgh’s population (currently 430,000) kicking and screaming into the world.
The Lothian Health Trust sold the Lauriston Place site for over £30 million.
In August 1998 the contract for the new Royal Infirmary at Little France was signed. Building began in October the same year and was completed by late 2003.
The 124-year-old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary closed its doors on May 1st 2003 as the last of its medical services moved to a new £184 million hospital on a greenfield site to the south of the city. The winning consortium who bought the old Royal infirmary site on Lauriston Place was Southside Capital Ltd, a joint venture comprising Taylor Woodrow, Kilmartin Property Group and Bank of Scotland. The new housing project, Quartermile, takes its name from the approximate diagonal distance across the site and from its situation, a quarter of a mile from both Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile. The replacement hospital, built under the private finance initiative, continues to prove controversial. A report in the British Medical Journal (26 April 2003, 905–8) found that the initiative had led to an overall reduction in bed numbers and capacity constraints across all acute specialties.

Please visit the website for full details:
www.show.scot.nhs.uk/luht/future.htm

The Western General Hospital (in north-west Edinburgh) is a large general hospital with an eclectic mix of architecture. It has a staff population of 6,000. In recent years artists have worked in Nurse-Led Urology, the Winter Wards (elderly people waiting for places in nursing homes) and the Longmore Breast Cancer Unit. Artlink has a dedicated gallery there between the Anne Ferguson and Alexander Donald buildings. Specialist organisations like the Maggie’s Centre and the Wellcome Trust Research Unit have established connections with Artlink and in the past we have placed artists in both of these organisations to produce work.

A brief history of the Western General Hospital
The hospital’s origins lie in Craigleith Hospital and Poorhouse founded in 1868.
This served as an army hospital during World War One. In 1930, under the terms of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929, all poor law hospitals were transferred to the administration of large burghs and counties. The Western General became a 200-bed municipal hospital open to the general public, and teaching facilities were soon introduced. Between 1941 and 1949 part of the Western General was given over to the Polish School of Medicine at Edinburgh and became known as Paderewski Hospital. In 1948 it became part of Edinburgh Northern Hospitals. Presently it is part of the Lothian University Hospitals NHS Trust. The Western General Hospital cares for more than 150,000 patients every year, providing district general hospital services for north Edinburgh and surrounding areas, including some services for the whole of Lothian, which has a population of over 750,000.

Please visit the website for full details:
http://129.215.140.77/wgh/
www.maggiescentres.org