CLYDEBANK HEALTH AND CARE CENTRE

Artist/s: Bespoke Atelier, Jim Buchanon, Ruth Olden, Cultural Geographer

Clients and Partners: West Dunbartonshire HSCP, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

Funders:
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, West Dunbartonshire HSCP Endowments, The Green Exercise Partnership, Creative Scotland

An art strategy for the curation, design and delivery of an art programme for a new Health and Care Centre for Clydebank, drawing on the rich social narratives, skills and experience of the surrounding community.

Ginkgo Projects worked with an art and environment strategy group, comprising staff, a building design team, local HSCP community representatives and artists to create programme of work that connects the building to its social and cultural post-industrial context.  A key part of the programme was Makers and Menders, researched by cultural geographer Ruth Olden who worked with designers Bespoke Atelier to explore the narratives developed in her research for River to Recovery.

Bespoke Atelier design for main reception desk at Clydebank Health and Care Centre

Winner at the prestigious Building Better Healthcare awards:

  • Best Collaborative Arts Project (Static): “The judges chose a winner that truly integrated the art into the whole build, and with it telling a clear story”

  • Best Healthcare Development under £25 million: “The winner of the award wowed the judges with its clarity in design, with bright and engaging spaces that are inviting for patients”

Areas of focus:  

  • Creating a calm welcoming environment

  • Providing insight and distraction 

  • Developing work that responds to the town’s rich history and is connected with and to the local community 

  • Promoting a collective Clydebank, ‘The Bankie voice’ and narrative 

  • Connecting with nature and surrounding environment 

RUTH OLDER: RIVER TO RECOVERY

This initial engagement project commissioned by the client, provided the framework for later commissioning. It explored the journey of Clydebank’s people after its industrial demise and resulted in an anthology collection of rich stories by Clydebank’s makers and menders: people who have not only lived the change but who are also enacting change in response: stitching, fixing, digging, sharing, upskilling, and storytelling, to tend to health, wellbeing, community and environment in the area. 

Bespoke Atelier: Welcome and Wayfinding 

Bespoke Atelier developed designs for the main gates, community reception desk, manifestations, and curtains at Clydebank Health and Care Centre. Inspiration derived from some of the stories within River to Recovery, alongside forms and textures of the local landscape such as the Kilpatrick Hills, and Iain McHarg’s studies around the connection between people, nature and the city. 

Jim Buchanan: Lightwell

Lightwell is a classical labyrinth design based on a historical pattern dating back five millennia. Since the pattern invites an inward journey and then to repeat the path in reverse, a common interpretation is of life’s cyclical journey. The Clydebank courtyard sits approximately over the former John Brown’s shipyard foundry – a location for material transformation, hence the selection of Cor-ten steel to draw the labyrinth pattern.  

Jim developed the oscillating pattern to reference the rise and fall of our breath as we walk, the left/right of footfall, brainwave patterns, but also to link to nature through the ripple on the river Clyde’s surface.

Residency Programme: Makers and Menders

An 18-month socially-engaged residency programme saw artist Marion Parola of Bespoke Atelier and cultural geographer Ruth Olden become part of the health and social care landscape of Clydebank during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by the creativity, compassion and resourcefulness of the Clydebank community during these uncertain times, Makers and Menders made a significant contribution to the psychological wellbeing and recovery of community members; paving the way for artist practices to be more embedded into health and social care structures and services. 

Ruth Olden took a strategic role in the residency, developing an ‘ecology of practice’ and working to understand the health and social care landscape. Bespoke Atelier worked in dialogue with Olden and engaged “Bankies” in their own design practice to produce products and designs for themselves, families and friends and for some of the spaces in both the old and new health care centre.  

The residencies were timed to coincide with the rescheduled UN Climate Conference COP26 in 2021 and the opening of the New Health and Care Centre in the heart of Queen’s Quay, Clydebank. 

Bespoke Atelier worked with residents to create designs and samples for a new ‘Clydebank Collection’: a series of wearable products and items for the home, drawing on Clydebank references.