Artists were given seed grants to produce proposals based on site-visits and periods of research in the hospitals. This time was used to identify individuals, groups or departments within the hospitals who are interested in collaboration. Functionsuite supports many different approaches to research, co-authorship and collaboration. The evaluation and documentation of the research’s development is an integral part of the project, observing and reflecting on collaboration.
The proposals mark a first reflective point in the research process. They are not intended as description of fixed outcomes. They are a tool by which the project can support and extend critical debate. The proposals will develop through talks, interventions, consultations, screenings and other appropriate activities.
Justin Kenrick, our affiliated social anthropologist, is involved throughout the project looking at the collaborative process engaged in by artists. Before compiling their proposals all the artists have had a discussion with him.
The artists are working to staggered deadlines, and proposals will be published as they are submitted. Please visit again if you don’t see the proposal you may be interested in as it could be online the next time you visit the site.
We welcome feedback, comments and suggestions on any of the published proposals and are keen to support debate around them via our notice boards so please contribute to the research...

In developing the New Republic proposal I found that going out to St John’s and talking to people ‘on the ground’ , in situ, was the easiest and most successful way of communicating. Of all the initial discussions that I had with staff those concerning the courtyard between the Children’s Ward and SCBU (one with Mary Benson from the Children’s Ward, one with Lynn Haddow from the Children’s Ward and one with a male nurse from SCBU) were the most dynamic and fruitful. I had also made links with Physio and the Chaplaincy early in the research, but subsequently found that my contacts with the Children’s Ward and SCBU grew to occupy all of my time researching the proposal. This is how I came to concentrate on the children’s/SCBU courtyard.

The initial conversations that I had with Mary and Lynn on the Children’s Ward quickly came to centre on what involvement the children who visit the ward could have in the development of the courtyard. The fact that most of the children are outpatients would have a bearing on the nature of the children’s involvement, meaning that their initial input into the designs for the courtyard, in many instances, would have to be quick. I talked about my interest in direct action, guerilla tactics and ownership of space through creating something in that space. These ideas, through discussion, began to couple up with the question of how the children could be involved in the development of the courtyard. The potential for the children to take control of the courtyard and, in a sense, occupy or take ownership of the space through the act of creation became an exciting possibility. This also felt natural in that the majority of the wards looking out onto the courtyard are involved with children and babies.

The idea of creating a New Republic, a new order, within the courtyard arena came from these initial discussions. This could be achieved by asking the children in the children’s ward to make drawings, maps and make written descriptions of houses, buildings and landscape features that they consider to be ‘ideal’. These drawings and descriptions would then be treated as complete architectural drawings and would be followed ‘to the letter’ and built (on a small scale) within the courtyard. The New Republic would be viewable from the balcony on the children’s ward. This basic approach would mean the children, in a sense, creating a utopia that they could look down upon. The issue of access to the courtyard is one which would need further discussion but, if access was not possible, the idea of ‘utopia’ as a place that can never be entered would be strengthened and problems of some children not being able to go outside to the republic avoided.

The conversation that I had with the male nurse from SCBU resulted in the proposal developing to include the balcony at SCBU. He told me that the corridor from which the balcony is accessed is used by parents as a waiting area, but that it is not at all user friendly. He was keen for the balcony to become a part of the project proposal to allow parents to use it during the summer (and even on dry winter days) while waiting or having a coffee. This desire to open up the balcony was also driven by the fact that the SCBU ward has limited visual access to the courtyard from its windows. The development of the balcony would allow everyone at SCBU to get a good view of the courtyard and the New Republic and also provide a place for the SCBU staff to sit on their breaks.

Physical Description of the Courtyard at the Moment
The courtyard between the Children’s Ward and SCBU is overgrown with shrubs and trees at the moment. It is on a slope, which makes it interesting and different to most of the other courtyards around St John’s. The ‘wilderness’ feel of the courtyard could be seen as adding to the idea of the creation of something new, with the children as pioneers in a new land.

Physical Description of what might be Constructed in the Courtyard
(the New Republic)
The nature of the buildings and the landscape features of the republic would be decided upon by the children in the ward who chose to do a drawing or a map or a description, so can only be imagined. The other factor governing the nature of the buildings within the courtyard will be the budget. I propose that using wood to construct the buildings would allow a large number of buildings to be built within the budget constraints. Using wood will also mean that the buildings can be partially constructed offsite and then transported to the courtyard for final installation. The use of wood will also affect the aesthetic of the New Republic and give a ‘pioneering’ feel to the overall installation. The buildings could even be raised on wooden stilts, meaning that the vegetation could be left much as it is - a wilderness -, again strengthening the reference to pioneering and requiring less expense in landscaping. Wooden buildings could be easily painted and, imagining that may of the children's drawings will involve bright colours, remain true to their initial designs. My first draught proposed that the New Republic be walled in some way; either by being encircled by a wall or by having a single wall built blocking the view along the length of the ground floor corridor. The wall would have acted to make the New Republic in some ways exclusive to the children by being viewable only from the first floor and above. The best - or perhaps only - way to view the ‘utopia’ would be from SCBU and the children’s ward windows, and balconies and the corridor between. Building a wall would take up a major part of the budget, and may not be a popular idea as it would deliberately adversely affect the view of the courtyard from the ground floor windows. A ‘gentler’ way of manifesting the exclusiveness of the project would be either the construction of a high wooden fence circling the buildings further away from the windows, or the raising of the buildings on stilts. The raising of the buildings would allow them to be enjoyed best from the top floor, with only the undersides visible from the ground floor corridor. Another advantage of wooden constructions ( over concrete or steel) would be the ease with which they could be removed. I would like to imagine that the New Republic would continue to look good for around 10 years, or more, but at some time the constructions would have to be removed.

Methods
The designs could be developed from drawings, verbal descriptions and written descriptions done over time in the children's’ ward with the help of Lynn Haddow, the staff and Paul. Paul could also come in on various occasions and work with the children on their ideas.

The resulting drawings could be realised in wood and other appropriate materials after being taken to 3D design stage by Paul. (No compromise of the drawing’s aesthetic would be made). The fabrication would require a team of people (possibly a group of older local school children, as Lynn Haddow has contacts with school children’s groups who may be interested). When, and if, appropriate any of the children on the wards could become involved in the fabrication and view/ take part in the construction of their designs. It would be important that the people working on the fabrication came to the ward and met the children and staff.

How the Project Might Maintain a Relevance Over Years
The structures could be built in such a way as to allow them to be altered frequently, perhaps every year. Perhaps New Republic workshops could be arranged every spring with new designs being installed onto the stilted structures every summer. Much of the budget on the initial project will go on the construction of strong wooden platforms or on the wooden fence. These could remain year after year , meaning that the changing of the actual buildings would cost far less than the initial installation.

Hallo to you all, I am still in post general anesthetic headspace so.... err; if this is really a bit odd forgive me...

I arrive in the hospital rather fazed.... the long train trip; half asleep, half spent asleep, half staring dumbly at the beautiful landscape and wishing I could live in it.

I want to not know what I am doing for longer. I want to wander about and think. I cannot launch my mind before my mind is ready for it. Arriving. Wandering the territory. Finding out what's going on. Research, search.

Imagine the hospital context in a way that no one has ever imagined it before. Why is it here? What existed before ospitals (misspellings - ospiotal, glottal, spittal, spit, horse, horse spittal,) hospitals?... is it not one of the ultimate hierarchies that supports the imbalances of our structure? I want to avoid wanting to have ideas, I want to let go of having ideas, and let, hell, let go of ways of getting ideas, and want to wander and find. Find what to do? No find out what’s going on, and therefore find out how I can insert what I want to do, what might be relevant to do. Here. Yes this is a response BUT first there is the groundwork. As much as is possible and feasible. Is there a level of knowledge that is specific to each place, a generally applicable amount of knowledge that you can use anywhere? No, not at all. This place is deeply unlike that place for example, it may look alike, but is not so....

[A writing process that echoes the idea of malfunction, incompetence, illness, disease, overlaod, overlaid, overlord, overload, im- and anti- perfection.]

...After my first day I feel I have failed myself and fallen, inexplicably, into old ways of doing things, into habits and patterns... getting on the phone, random approaches, a lack of focus and intention, completely...

I no longer am interested in this ‘performance research’ idea, that every phone call I make is an art moment in the making, every encounter and oncversation (oncology, with-verse-poetry-between-us-station), conversationcould be part of the process of production, my production process.
It’s worn out its usefulness a strategy for widening the field, widening the possibilities - of a project…

Staring at an avalanched mountain I thought I would (wooded path) be climbing, and to find that mountain gone and realise slowly I must find another path. I am at this point now. The ground under my feet is full of Pavlov crevasses and slush. Literally on thin ice.

I think I cannot collaborate with a patient. I cannot abide that feeling that I am being employed to alleviate a situation. I cannot abide feeling so privileged and yet so distant through my innate disconnection and other status – artist.

I propose to add my name and title to the internal phone book, and see if anyone rings that number before 2005. Why is the artist the proactive enquirer? Why not appear in the context in a delicate, kit kat manner and wait humbly to be implicated within the system? Is anyone out there as curious as I am?

Am I as curious as I could be?

I have not chosen this context, and that is the biggest problem, it has not evolved out of my own experience, I have been invited in and I cannot see what I am doing there, I cannot see how I can perform. From the frothy streets of London to here. I am all at sea. Completely out of it.

Wary and worried. What an experience, keep an open mind.

I am exhausted by inout inout seesaw and the battle with my own inclinations versus the idea of a good idea. A clever strategy, surely one of the things that that makes art a separate space from life is the possibility for elegant solutions and strategies, for nimbleness a space where we can practice and bring things back to our lives, others lives. Or is life where one learns and practices nimbleness, to then work with art in an a=entirely a=clumsy, entirely and clumsy, fraughtly ignorant, open-ended manner. But surely they are the same, one cannot be a better space than the other, for the artist, the artist’s capacities will shine in all their activities.

This morning I walk behind an incredibly classic walk of the lithium shuffle and later in the afternoon I pass by a woman in a fur coat who suddenly laughs, manically and catchingly. In the middle of the day I was on a bus looking down, sheltered by the pane of glass and watched a group at a crossing, a man with one foot forward in a joking pose as if about to start a marathon, everyone around him was slowly affected and beginning to laugh...

(People are friendly here, they really are, you notice it, its different from South and different from London.)

Anyway I thought about laughing, and I heard about that laughing club, people go to instead of yoga, and the idea of hysterically and laughter

(God there’s a bunch of pissed up ladies in the carriage really whooping and screaming... maybe they’ll get off at Newcastle they seem very northern)

...The week has been amazing. New areas for me. I did arrive feeling I don’t want to do anything that involves working with people. I have had the opposite impression. I mean I have been immersed in an approach to people that is considerate, interested, and open to change and not a big deal. Justin is a social anthropologist with the project. He has worked with sex workers, and an African tribe of tree dwellers. And now he lectures at Glasgow University. He talked about participating with societies he has studied. That its not about observing, but about taking part as much as possible, learning to dance, cook, do all the things the tribes or whoever it is are doing. He said he was stopped from singing at a festival for rain because his voice was so bad and they thought he might put off the spirits.

Maybe I am dyslexic as well…

I said I usually don’t describe what I do as collaboration. I am in a crisis about how I work, I want to change. I cannot however abandon my practice, I just need to work certain things out, hone my thinking and my practice to a way of working. How is it that I want to work? That seems to be my question. I felt many crossovers. Justin talked about bringing as much of your self with you when coming to work with a group.

(We are in Berwick. I know it is beautiful and it’s on my left and dark as pitch, the sea will be there unseen.)

Justin said the research should be made on the ground. Meaning responding to what happened in the physical engagement with place. Like engaging with chance; he almost described the ‘Occasional Sights’ methodology. How weird. Like that woman in the Turner Centre who seemed to know exactly what I was talking about…
I realise now Functionsuite is an opportunity to explore collaboration still further. I mean it is a chance to work in a way I really want to work, and with others. Anne said how can you not? As if it might even be possible. I agree it is a tendency I have, to be in conversation with people, to involve others in my thinking process. I get so doubtful on my own.

I seem to have deleted a whole load of sentences about wondering if this way of working is a female trait… this voracious connection making… and re. The Saul Albert’s article thinking my equivalent of free software is chat, conversation. Hanging out allowing people to speak, and thinking out loud. Free software seems to be all about how to avoid solo authorship.

(Anyway, drove through to St Johns Hospital with Anne. Mountains, sunrays, chocolate smells, or shortbread, from factory, houses getting more normal. Arriving in Livingston. Seeing the red quarries, The Binns, like Ayer’s rock (or Arthur’s seat).

Go straight to the laundry at St Johns. Shown around by Bill, the laundry manager, who I had talked to earlier that day. Everyone seemed to mellow after five minutes or so…
The laundry also got him fired up. It’s an amazing place. He had gone off to work for Sunlight Laundry for ten years. Not a local. Very hard work folding pillowslips, fast, towels and sheets get folded by huge machines. Clothes go in between huge rollers covered in felt.

(The tea I’m drinking tastes of wet moss)

I dreamed about textiles work. Putting felt through the wash (85 degrees) and seeing what'll happen t it. Wanting to use the power of the laundry. Printing onto sheets, stories that people can read in bed.
Like the sheet my dad gave me as a kid, with bits of comic on it…. reading bits of novels, an overnight stay, just a part of a story, a chapter, a story that gets added to bit by bit. Sweet idea. Not very exciting. Encouraging graffiti. The sheets would be sent all over the place. Be alleviation amongst the blankness, blankets, a respite from logos. Something to read or entertain or comfort the patient. Would it be seen as inappropriate? Is it no more than those horrid wooden boards with poems on along the corridor? But on sheets. Iron-on labels, printable sheets. There’s an interesting space to communicate or document within.

My mum is now lying in a hospital. What would I like to make for her? What would cheer her up? A story about someone else that anyone can relate to. - Sheets covered in drawings by kids. It’s like Grennan and Sperandio – she would like a word game she could play or some rude jokes.

Anne talked about a place where they live by self-sufficiency, south of Glasgow. I am interested in alternative power, in what it means to be self sufficient, and in sustainability. But it could be a form of isolation from the world, does it mean a rejection of the mainstream, or of unknown others, could be a narrowing of the mind?

The steam vent is great. It is the only surplus condensate steam not used by the laundry. It could be a hot house, a tropical jungle, a steam room, sauna for patients staff who are tired of folding and lifting, whose muscles ache, heads ache. It’s more for staff really... it’s on the way out. How could it be funded? A glass ceiling so can see the sky? Will it be too steamy for the Scottish, Calvinistic work ethic? Stoicism. I imagine an ecological recycling space, where the initial steam run-off is made as much of as possible. It could be another reason to go to hospital. To visit your relatives and also to go to the hot house. To stop the separation of one thing from another. The laundry can power a leisure dome, like the Cornwall glass place. Eden. Livingstone’s Eden. Formed like a __________-
Whelk?

(Just realised the landscape is covered in snow outside the train. It is quite cold I must say.)

Snow when thinking of steam

(Those screamers seem to be excited; maybe they will vacate the train.)

When they talked about patients, I felt but I am a patient, we are all patients.

The patient escape alarm goes off…people are locked up here, forever. The people who have not left, who live in the hospital. That was interestingly talked about by Sue... there used to be asylums, complete communities that catered for the very long term ill. They were employed in jobs in the asylum/village services - gardening, catering, sewing etc. This is now all gone, patients have nothing to do, and they can suffer more from boredom than from their actual illness. There is literally nothing for them to do. The fact that the old asylum, build round turn of century is now sold to property developers and will soon house the elite of the area, the most privileged, it makes you think. And those patients are often placed "in the community", the community from which the elite will gladly be moving out of perhaps. They are now able to buy the security and space and sense of belonging that the ill-used to "enjoy". The idea of a hospital as a sanctuary, asylum, and active community is pretty much absent from where I visited. Andrew Duncan is the only one devoted to mental health that I spent time in; it does not feel like a place of sanctuary. The idea that when you are ill you need rest, ‘retreat’ and the possibility to recover is not catered for anymore at all. It seems all those jobs from Asylum days have withered away to become ________ occupational therapy. Activities, which are there because activity is important for sense of well-being. Duh, how could anyone miss that? Surely the only drive behind last 3 decades of health service _______ has been Thatcherite priorities - a profound lack of regard for the ill, the underprivileged, the disabled, the poor, and the unemployed? Surely the mentally ill have just been fucked over along with the working class redundant, and the consumers who’ve got spare money too, conned to go and spend it all?

… could make some research or work about the people who move into the asylum properties – that whole scenario…

That was something amazing Justin said actually... that the whole world is held together invisibly by people who work together with mutual respect and quietly get on with enabling others and each other and themselves to work in another system altogether, like the traveling community we spoke about last night. The Appleby Horse Fair . Anne has been. Thousands of gypsies selling horses. The alternative network that simply functions outside the system. I would love to go.

Why I like the fact of the grey or recycled water that’s run-off from the roof of the hospital, and that is used 3 times before going into steam or down the drain. (25 percent less volume as that lost in evaporation - like the soul that weighs x amount and the body getting lighter at death) Because it’s the idea of existing independently from the mains. Getting a supply from outside the system altogether. Like having an allotment and planting own food and bypassing Tesco for ever after.

(I hear a cat meow on the train.)

more NOTES (in a variety of provisional papers and notes I find)
Occupational Therapy run Art classes. I have a problem, perhaps a preconception to be dissolved, with the way Art is thought of as dabbling in painting and drawing in O.T. and other such activities. As if it’s not the most high-risk conceptual activity of them all.
Met Ruth in Horticulture O.T. Ruth very nice. Up for doing something for sure.
Beth Again an amazing self motivated woman. Very up for connecting. There’s a voluntary library run entirely voluntarily
Went to laundry, met Malcolm, who introduced me to the woman working in the sewing room, who introduced me to the facilities manager... all very interested
Met another professor - brain scanner, radiographer. Works in tandem with psychiatry. What is psychiatry? The medical approach to a mental illness. Looking at biochemical and physiological abnormalities as much as or more than social or environmental circumstances. Therapy, psychology is more about personal life histories etc.

Part of me thinks to create a project here that utilises many people’s skills and inputs that could be completely anonymous.
A kind of expanded AA meeting, Anonymous meeting of authors, AMA, AAM, anonymous authors meeting. Typical recipe for community art?

The connection between one’s name, identity, past and Authorship and the AA methodology of meetings and organizing, probably a bit like Quakers, and the idea of creative commons and collaborative authorship, all the rage, Sophie Hope of B+B just written a text about it, after Saul Albert’s. She mentions ‘Q’, which I have been reading up in Edinburgh, by Luther Blisset.

Would it, like Paul is encountering, create a room full of wind chimes? and sculptures of abstracted dogs etc.? Hundreds of wind chimes sounds brilliant!

I can imagine a construct/event that is multivocal. Various. Chaotic. Transportable. A traveling show. I keep thinking it would be interesting to work with theatre in this context, with live performance, or with song.

It is easy to think these things. They are like petals blowing across the sky, ideas from elsewhere and disappearing.

(The trolley comes along and we have a weird conversation. I say is there a buffet (buffay) on the train, he says only in the bar. I don’t understand, he repeats, I say is the buffet open, he says I thought you said muffin, I say buffet. he says buffy (! - the vampire slayer) then accuses me,'its your accent!')

A WEEK LATER I AM HOME IN LONDON

The courtyards within acute admission wards

(out of the window a small girl is playing tennis of sorts with a teacher on the green pitch at the school. When she hits the ball she goes into a jumping ecstasy of delight)

You can see the courtyards from outpatients in the Andrew Duncan Clinic, and the 2nd courtyard is by the alcohol problems unit. They used to employ patients - Now its occupational therapy. This strikes a chord with the idea of art for arts sake and the idea of a service or function, a connection to the world of circulation of goods and services… art is something that is more like ideas, a different currency. Mutable, hard to pin down.

Beth runs the volunteering services. She is building relationships. She does etchings.
Government wants to increase volunteering in 1998 thus she got this brand new post. She applied because she had been redundant and made hundreds of applications elsewhere and it suited her well. Self motivated, working solo, she had to start the whole thing, and nothing was in place. She created the job for herself. It is a new resource, staff could see it like that but on the whole they don’t. They don’t see how it could actually relieve them of work and responsibility, see it as a service that’s useful for them, but they don’t. Staff don’t support volunteers. Volunteers are total mix of backgrounds, ages etc, From 16-80, probably 40 percent male, 60 female. She trains them, according to their skills and experience and what they want to get out of it. There are 140 volunteers, 70 in tearoom. It’s like a "job centre dating agency" - a pool of people waiting to be placed. There are different motivations of volunteering. To learn, get experience. Sometimes from patients, relatives of patients. People do want to do something useful. They become Ward Buddies, tea, manicure, reading letters, and writing, going for walk… Volunteers attach to specific groups, like in Church Centre, which is a social space and also one to relationships that last a very long time. There are other volunteer organizations, WRVS, League of friends etc.
Volunteers must be flexible and responsive to others’ needs. Patients have little motivation due to context. BOREDOM is bigger problem than "illnesses", more than one person says this, staff don’t help, they sit in the staff room together all day and lose sight of the fact that patients are people.

Beth set up the library, it was almost an accident. The Royal Edinburgh never had anything like that (but the Western General hospital did). Could volunteering be a life changing service for patients? No, it is done incrementally, in tiny bits… One of biggest hurdles is changing the minds of staff. Institutional care has big effect on patients. O.T. and nursing staff often at loggerheads, a professional rivalry.

On ringing Dr Jonathon in the alcohol problems unit I found myself unmasked and transferred to O.T. I learn quickly that "art" is associated directly with O.T., the community art of hospital life I guess… He is lead consultant of alcohol problems unit.
Speak to Louise in Outpatients at 20 Morningside, range from those with chronic dependency to those who will change - "Changing lifestyle group". Watercolour pastels calligraphy
Links into community, like going to art class, they copy paintings from books. It’s psychodynamic. Used to run a treatment centre and it included pottery.

The laundry at Andrew Duncan is a port of call to the laundry in St. Johns
Where manager Bill knows about the grey water in St Johns.

TALKING WITH JUSTIN KENRICK, FUNCTIONSUITE AND OTHER ‘SEED’ ARTISTS

Illnesses, Explaining roles, Questions around collaboration. My crisis, that I feel uncomfortable as a researcher. I wonder whether collaboration is possible at all
I have too many of my own assumptions. I am too busy perhaps questioning the brief, in art world brief and proposal structure terms. Which I am sick of.

Bodily experience is vital - Justin says this: embodied learning, building trust, trust is key; participation deepens trust, (although can’t always participate, like when he worked with sex workers). When he, the anthropologist, can offer something useful to them
(an exchange). I say: I don’t know what I’m doing, or what if you don’t know what you might be able to exchange? What do they really want or need? How do you talk to someone who doesn’t want to talk to you? Beth, the volunteer co-coordinator, in her ‘stand alone’ post. ‘Natural relationships’. Identify a bigger structure.

Someone else says, "policy orientated", Can be seen as powerful and powerless.
Justin talks about clowning, that it can be swapped for genuine relationship. How do you build up trust? Colombo’s strategy, the clown.

Bringing normality into institutions. What we, artists, are doing is really normal and we are bringing that normality into the institution, which is totally abnormal.
Mutual exchange, looking for mutual ground. Mutual relationships are always there, always possible… Asking questions, who asks the questions, who is the interrogator?
Can there be an equal exchange?

Where does the power lie? Link jobs and personal experience. Funding issues can lead to paralysis. Talk about ideas and not just being a facilitator. "How much money have we got, what can we make?"

The problem with equal exchange, is it ever equal? Justin talked about my spiel being about - Bringing in more of myself. How can I build in hesitation? Bring as much of yourself in as possible. He said juxtaposition of meaning makes you see something deeper. Challenge one’s own ways of approaching work. Synchronicity. Ask what comes from the ground, the site, and the place. Can you instigate chance?

Paul - courtyards – talked about nor resolving any problems, about creating a subject for discussion and action.

How can I get something out of it, personally, not as an artist? (what’s the difference?) In the collaborative process you erode each other’s prejudices, like in a friendship.

Anne – you can’t avoid working with people.

Anne says Proposal phase is so you can have ideas without compromise.

PROPOSE MORE RESEARCH

Justin - Re. Empowering, giving power is an insult! Not placating, not prettify, not offering.

AT ST. JOHNS WITH ANNE
Bill, the laundry at St Johns. The spare steam, finding a suitable use.
"Condensate" = spare steam. Spare steam in ground, cost of piping steam to hospital is prohibitive.
Talk to Jim and Brian- Engineers in estates dept
15 hospitals in Lothian. Don’t need to segregate the laundry/sheets etc
How long does a sheet last? Might get 100 or 150 washed, and then the linen will die.
Company recycles cotton. Elma has been working there since 70’s.
Bulk linen top 85degrees, 10 mins at 65 or 3 mins at 71 kills all bugs
NHS insists on thermal disinfection, some others use chemical disinfection.
Water down the drain, 25 percent evaporates off during wash cycle
More water gets used than goes down the drain.

PHARMACY
We meet the secretary at St John’s pharmacy
Maggots and leeches grown in Wales
Hirudo medicines kept in fridge to keep inactive
57 staff in pharmacy
Pharmacists know more about drugs than doctors
4yrs + 1 yr to qualify as pharmacist.
Pharmacist applies drug to illness.
Pharmacologist makes the drugs.
Clinical pharmacist, pairs up with Dr on ward to help prescribe
Martindale’s Encyclopedia of drugs and updates (like a shipping chart)
Harm dispense medicine to inpatients and discharge medicine before go home and some outpatients. Always bring your medication in with you. They make stuff up like special blood for hematology, chemotherapy etc. There is a special company who discards and disposes of medicine all the diff hospital departments are ‘represented’ in the pharmacy
(It’s a kind of map of the hospital and the illnesses…) They bulk buy drugs, its all centralized, take responsibility for drugs and correct labeling, if any mistakes it comes back to them/… Drug makers are in UK; some products have to buy in,
Are there any local drug makers?
Homeopathy, have to get remedies from Napier University in Edinburgh
Vaccines, vaccinations.
Pharmacy on lower ground floor as it’s easier to handle deliveries.
The secretary says she thinks people believe too much in drugs being a cure all and that thinks positively is the best way to recover. Dispense positivity!

Anne says water is a medicine. The secretary says the chief pharmacist, is a very busy woman, v. knowledgeable and off to conferences… "She’s on nodding terms with the seagulls" Her specialism is procurement and negotiating contracts, pediatric medicine, aseptic, education training. Anne says people are self-medicating from the Internet a lot now…

The Royal Edinburgh
Facilities Department run the sewing room, the supervisor says the patients have no money, coming there to get a fitted outfit is like retail therapy, all clothes are labeled with patients names

The Radiographer I meet by plucking a name from the phone book talks about using the x-ray work he does in context; it is linked closely with psychiatry. He tells me the diff btwn copy film and x-ray, emulsion on one side for copy film and on both sides for x-ray. He is annoyed when his craft is misrepresented in media.

He tells me the medical world is very complicated, hierarchies are difficult to see from the outside… hospitals are very internalized and self sufficient, or like worlds unto themselves, they go on all day all night…. (Like planets or space stations, or cities, or prisons)
I briefly meet a specialist in schizophrenia (she is introduced to me in the lift as Anna, an artist and I don’t think you’d want to meet her and she looks at him and me with a withering glance and says not) He says she is " a very practical person" Says psychiatrists all have different approaches.
He tells me that psychiatrists use language as the principle tool to diagnose mental condition, repetitive thoughts etc… To see is brain damaged (he can do a scan to see but very rarely that’s the cause). The psychiatric imagine is an esoteric subject. Psychiatry argues that people are biologically ill, it’s a biochemical imbalance or a structural abnormality e.g. damage. He goes into great technical detail about how scans are done and how they are read, sideways and downwards (?) he talks about the asymmetrical, sagital plane being more difficult to read than the symmetrical. He talks about the pleasing nature of the symmetrical, the aesthetics of brain scans, says you can see how old age atrophies a brain in a scan, as in Alzheimer’s. I like the absurdity of our way of meeting up.

ST JOHNS LAUNDRY
Long term patients washing gets done by them
7000 mops per week go thru wash
Colour coded bags fro washing:

Green – covers
Blue – personal clothes
Yellow - pajamas and undies
White – white linen, towels
Orange/red – dry cleaning

ALCOHOL PROBLEMS UNIT
Alcohol problems unit - Has 3 arms - 11 cpn, Alcohol specialists in different areas.
D.T. is a boundary line. People come in for 9 days to detoxify. Librium helps with dts
Maudsley is a centre of excellence for work with alcoholism and has similar service for people with alcohol problems. The aps has been in place for 30 years… it’s rare to have specialist beds for alcohol problems.
I meet Ruth in OT horticulture, its space, separate from hospital and one (if I was institutionalized there) I would depend on for my whole sense of sanity! Garden, greenhouse, woods etc

(See www Lothian primary care trust and click "services")

More miscellany, not in notebooks…

(I taste rice pudding)

There is an interpretation and translation service.
A medical library I chance upon in the oldest most labyrinthine hospital, the Western General.

I find my notes from the London meetings in December…

Some consent forms un-used.
There is a patient escape alarm.
I find my week’s questions.
Are there any professors or Doctors who also work in London on regular basis?
Is their social networking among staff?
(Just seen a video of a re-enactment of the cramps playing a gig in a psychiatric hospital in USA and all the patients going wild to the rock and roll. Done by Forsyth and Pollard in the ICA. (all about documentation and evidence.)

This is not a proposal, not a clear idea
(I haven’t got to that stage, and wonder if it’s necessary to do so)

I am interested by everything I saw. By the volunteers network, by the pharmacy a kind crown jewels, by the steam escape and recycled water, by Paul’s idea of a republic for kids, by Graham’s idea of a wireless network, by the bus routes that join the hospitals, by the idea of occupational therapy, by the garden up there in the woods, by the courtyards, the yards in Andrew Duncan, really bleak spaces, by using the toilets as a separate space in the institution, a private space, the volunteers library. All these thing share a kind of positive hopefulness about them in my mind. They are all locations in my mind that fill me with hope when I see them in my minds eye. I wan to avoid setting out to link to people, I want that to be very by the by. What has everything got to do with everything else?

I definitely liked St Johns atmosphere the most. I wonder how to operate there.
By making an invisible sculpture under a microscope.

My proposal has to include spending a lot more time in situ! I remember Justin’s comment about chance and synchronicity and there is a case for pursuing that way of operating in this situation. Because it is a kind of mental disarray and intuition and illogic brought into the working process. I would be very happy to let work-involving patients and staffs evolve. I like the idea that my position as wanderer in the hierarchical hospital space is fore grounded along with those I may work with or involve. I guess that’s what Functionsuite already do. I like the idea of trying to collage together the very unconnected departments and services and people and facilities into one extensive incoherent event or narrative. The hospital reminds me of the Internet, or a department store as in "error 404". It is striving for order, like a city-state, I would like to create some disorder. But this disorder might mess with people’s lives and I don’t want to do that, only on a virtual level. A drama. I am interested in incoherence, mental overload, and the periphery of collapse. In this case I am interested in dementia, in that starting point of random language construction. I would like to make something that could be in a gallery later on. Something that is compelling enough off site and in a blank context.

Do I take the hospital as my subject matter, my metaphor, and a subject of critique, or as an audience, or as a set of potential participants? How am I in relation to the hospital? I am a patient in another hospital but not here because I do not live here.
Don’t want to make another book. Guide to hospitals. Document of my process. (Not interesting for others) It’s a world unto itself, surely when I have a project I will want to make use of a variety of the services, people, structures that I have become aware of? Not just one area.

I like the laundry, the creation of utter cleanliness.
I would like to make some clothes for people to wear. Some sheets for people to be ill on. Embroidered with stories. Printed with stories. Sheets printed with stories of the hospital.
Was it true, bored patients, what changes every day? The sheets, the linen,
get it interesting. Temporal work as the stories will fade and linen will start to fray and wear. Sauna, steam room on steam vent, a warm room, a greenhouse full of tropical plants, a hothouse, like the room in the commonwealth institute. Escape to another place.
A free launderette with service washes for the visitors and families. Something useful to do whilst visiting relatives, loved ones. Explore more about the water recycling of laundry.
To be playful and meaningful, to be worthy of praise, Praiseworthy, Plays worthy, Play worthy, Seaworthy

Thanks to Caz and Anne at Functionsuite for the colour coding and editing suggestions.

* Purple italic – personal reflections
* Dark blue – immediate observations describing real time moments
* Green – notes about The Royal Edinburgh Hospital
* Orange – notes about St John’s Hospital at Lowden
* Red – ideas or possible artistic methods as they come up
* Dark grey – to notify the main diaristic body of the text.

Saul Albert Selected Texts – http://www.twenteenthcentury.com/saul/
Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio – http://www.kartoonkings.com/blog/view.html/
Appleby Horse Fair – http://www.applebytownconcil.fsnet.co.uk/
Q nominated for the Guardian 1st book prize was written by 4 artists under the name
Luther Blissett – http://www.lutherblissett.net/index_en.html
B&B is a curatorial collaborative partnership between Sophie Hope & Sarah Carrington
http://www.welcome.to/b.b
Martindale’s Virtual Medical Center: Medical Dictionaries.
http://martindalecenter.com/MedicalD_Dict.html
Maudsley Hospital , London England – http://www.slam.nhs.uk/
Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard – the project referenced is File under Sacred Music

My original proposal for working on privacy within the hospital has lead me to research the history of the psychiatric asylum and the philosophies that have dealt with aspects of the institution throughout it’s history. From this research I have found that the evolution of the institution itself through time has largely stayed the same in usage while the philosophies that govern it have changed, more classifications and more patients, but unfortunately not always for the best. In fact some of the original ideas from mental healthcare’s more productive periods during the enlightenment, lead by Dr. Phillipe Pinel, have been lost in favour of a more incarceration role. This research along with meetings with Ruth Rooney of the patients council and Susan Tennyson, a nurse working with planners of the new building, have lead me to feel my project would serve this community best by discussing the new PIF (private finance initiative) psychiatric hospital building that will be built soon. My discussions, initiated by Function Suite, with both Susan and Ruth made me aware of the need for the building to be considered a main factor in encouraging wellness in patients.

The project I am proposing is two fold. First is to create a portrait of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital by using some of the deconstruction methods practiced in environmental psychology. From my research I have found that spaces, especially in institutions, have a tendency to create more stress in terms of environment because they have not been thought about in terms of their psychology. The royal Edinburgh psychiatric hospital is a prime example of a stressful space because of the chaotic messages it sends out from its environment. I want to examine the reasons why the spaces are stressful and how they might be made better. The portrait of the building will be used in the next stage of the proposal.

The next part of the proposal is to create a focus group made up of nurses, patients, ex patients, an environmental psychologist, myself and other users of the hospital space to create a brief for the ideal ward. The first part of this process has already started and Ruth and Susan have already agreed to participate on some level in this group. Once all of the participants have been identified than I will discuss the portrait and what each of them might want to discuss in the meetings. From the beginning I am hoping to discuss a number of different models, theoretical and real, that have already been used, like R.D. Laing’s Kingsley Hall and Pinels’s moral therapy, and from them determine what to our group still seems relevant and can be used in the design of the space. Then we will meet to discuss the project together. My role will be to allow everyone to input into the process and formulate the ideas into a brief. This brief will be given to an architect to draw up the ward to our specifications. The brief and the drawings will then be presented to the politicians and planners in hope that it can be used and contribute to the design of the building.

The representational form of the research and focus group will be in a publication. Some of the research in this publication would be an interview I’ve done with Dr. Irwin Altman (an important environmental psychologist), photographs, transcripts of meetings and the portrait of the building. The centrepiece would be focus group and the documentation of that process. The overall idea of the project is to give the people who use the space the platform and tools in which to construct the space that they would want. To do this will require discussion and compromise and in this way the meaning of ideal is centred on the users and their ability to work together in creating the ideal. So the process is a model for how the space might work.

Primary Functionsuite Artist : Ilana Halperin
Primary Collaborator in the A&E Department : Dennis Purcell

When Alison Bonney first took me on a tour of the Accident and Emergency department at the New Royal Infirmary she explained when we were in the resuscitation room that all the lights could go out in the A&E and everyone would still be able to do their jobs because everyone knew everything so well in that environment, that they could almost work with their eyes shut.

Based on this idea, I began to wonder how this skill might apply to the world outside of the A&E in relation to the staff that work there - whether this muscle memory of environment might apply to daily life outside of the A&E. Combining this idea with an interest in the different tactics people use to cope with living or working in a high risk/high stress environment, I began to interview staff members using two primary questions :

How do you cope with working in such a high stress or high intensity working environment/ Is there anything specific you do to relax after work?

Could you please describe one place you really like, in as much detail as possible, using the same skills you would use to describe the exam room?

A Sample Strata Study from the A&E
To destress Rachel walks her dogs - both collie crosses, but only one dog now because the other one died last year, she was 16. Megan is 13 and Rachel won't get another dog until Megan passes away, and then she'll get two, definitely both collie-crosses again. Jackie goes rockclimbing at Alean Rock with some of the other nurses. Sometimes people go hillwalking together.

Dennis : The weather is so mercurial. I remember driving up to Akureyri from Reykjavik and on that drive we had, it was summer, but we had snow, we had sun, we had skies that contained everything all at one time. One of the oddities about the weather in Iceland is that if you pass through the same place on different days, depending on the sky, because the place seems to have a longer horizon than Scotland, in Scotland you are always meeting your mountain...Iceland actually has a feeling...it's like a very large plane, it is mountainous but they are on the fringe and you see this very big sky and the way the sky looks determines the landscape, and on different days seeing the same landscape is not like being in the same place because actually the nature of the sky changes the experience completely.

Martin: In the A&E no two days are the same and in many ways every patient is different and it makes the work very varied and interesting. You are always seeing and learning new things - so I suppose that is what makes it enjoyable.

Strata Study continued
Anna : I think I would choose Arthur's Seat because it is my favorite place to go and relax. If I have to describe it, I like the roughness of the rocks, I also like the softness of the flowers or the green of the trees. I really like the rocks because they are brown but they are topped with black. They kind of look like if they had been burned so they're very active. I've been there yesterday, so it's beautiful now, blossoming with yellow bushes and the grass in front of Arthur's Seat is so nice and bright and smooth, I like the differences, or the contrasts and I like the color...

Dennis: There are places where the sub-earth is clay red and the plants that grow are also red, they must take in a bit of the clay. It's gourse or grass but it's red instead of green. It's quite weird, like being on the moon, most strange, it's so volcanic and that is what determines the landscape, it's remarkable.

Pauline : I love the night shift, I'm a bit of a bat. I go out whenever I'm not working, which is another good reason to do night shift...The patients are wee darlings, they are the ones that really keep everyone going. If you have a shit day at work they'll always be the one to give you a thank you or 'you're very nice' like that. It's the really really ill ones that don't ever say anything, never to shout for cups of tea or shout for bedpans or that...the last ones to complain.

Mary : I think you end up really trusting each other a lot of the time. People recognize perhaps one day you're not feeling 100% today, there's always somebody who will be there to look out for you...It's such a close knit community, people are very close friends within that because you trust each other as colleagues. It's a funny place to work, isn't it, for that. Very diverse characters within it though maybe in other spheres of life we'd never work together or be close friends, but you tend to get on.

Bringing the outside in
Continuing to work with the questions listed in section one, as well as related material, the aim of the project would be to combine stories from outside and inside the A&E department into one narrative; bridging the gap between indoor work life at the hospital and daily life/daydream life that happens outside. Reference points for this include the lack of windows (access to an outside viewpoint or vista) in the A&E department itself, an impulse to bring individualized experiences into an environment where community members are encouraged to 'leave themselves at the door' and to create a forum which makes the new hospital more at home in its own skin.

I propose to work towards a final talk/ performative lecture provisionally titled Stories from the A&E, a weekend supplement to the staff in the department and greater hospital community, based on interviews and field material collected during a research/development period through the A&E. This material will be titled The A&E Strata Study. To distribute the information in a complementary form to the talk, a weekend supplement magazine would be published at the same time, containing information from The A&E Strata Study, available in the staff room, patient waiting rooms and main artery hall of the hospital.

How to Design a Weekend Supplement
• As recommended by Dennis Purcell, I would like to deliver an introductory talk to the A&E staff on my own work, my approach, background on the project and what to expect for future development of the Weekend Supplement.

• Two - three hillwalks in the area surrounding the hospital will be organized for A&E staff members.

• A local geologist will be invited to contribute information on the geological history of the New Royal Infirmary site, adding to knowledge about the new hospital in a long term context, as equally little information has been passed along on its present incarnation.

• Set up an 'information booth' for staff members somewhere in the A&E, so they may feel free to contribute to the project in whatever format they choose, whenever is convenient within their work schedules.

• Commission Dennis Purcell to do a series of illustrations based on the A&E department and selected narratives from The A&E Strata Study.

• Develop illustrations for the Weekend Supplement, based on locations described in The A&E Strata Study that will complement Dennis Purcell's illustrations.

• Gather together all material collected over the research and development period.

• Develop a script for the talk.

• Deliver the talk on one or more occasions in locations agreed upon in the hospital context, or in a nearby venue outwith the hospital setting.

• Design, publish and distribute Weekend Supplement magazine in the A&E department and other related sites.

Additional Points
Within the research and development period, I would like to carry out as much work as possible outwith the hospital setting itself. The A&E department is a very active and changeable environment. Though this project is in essense a portrait of the A&E, a primary aim within it is to support staff that work there to express other interests they have outwith the A&E itself.