Staying & Waiting

Staying & Waiting

Commissioned by Glasgow Architecture firm Dress For The Weather. ‘Staying & Waiting’ was a process-led collaboration with illustrator Kate McLelland for Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary.

Inspired by a series of situationist work in waiting rooms titled ‘Writer In Waiting’, as well as workshops with primary school children on anagram poetry, Staying & Waiting sought to un-foil new worlds and meanings from the corridors and waiting rooms of DGRI’s Children’s Ward.

The process involved collaboration with staff and key partners, as well as workshops and studio time to develop and explore the work in the initial conceptual process. Thereafter the work was fabricated to the artist’s and NHS’ specification.

Three poems based on the anagrams of ‘Hospital Waiting Room’ were written from an initial draft inspired by the Writer In Waiting project; An Animal Hotspot, A Starlit Lagoon and A Midnight’s Storm. Each poem sought to create new designations of space within the waiting rooms. Inspired by their current use (quiet room and play rooms) and the engagement work with primary-aged children, the poems were thereafter hand painted onto boards, with movable perspex panels to magnify and colour each word separately.

Using the ward staff’s handwriting an anagram haiku in the form of bead game sculptures adorn the corridor from entrance to exit.

Working with illustrator Kate McLelland the work was later illustrated in the form of murals and character motifs throughout the ward.