Nature Bathing @ East Lothian Community Hospital

In realising this highly crafted programme of commissions, NHS Lothian Charity’s Tonic Arts team and Round Table Projects worked with leading creatives to develop a people-centred healthcare environment where nature-based enhancement is instrumental in improving the physical and mental wellbeing of patients, staff and visitors.

The programme permeates the hospital building and grounds with art and design that draws upon the unique landscape and stories of East Lothian, providing distracting focal points and creating a restorative and calming environment for difficult times. Informed by research confirming the powerful impact of nature-based design, the programme employed a diversity of designers and media, curated as a holistic entity.

From hanging atrium installations to bespoke physiotherapy structures; from outdoor sculptures to photographic landscape works, the result is an environment that supports patients through their healthcare journey in beautifully crafted moments which connect the hospital with the natural world.
NEON's epic suspended atrium work GLADE evolved from research time spent with local school children, resulting in a monumental kinetic sculpture which evokes the calming sensation of ‘nature bathing’; sitting beneath a protective canopy of trees. sits peacefully over the atrium of East Lothian Community Hospital.

Within the grounds, Alex Allan’s sculptural interventions are used in physical rehabilitation, inviting patients and public to navigate the series of colourful and playful structures, encouraging movement and therapeutic use of the outdoor space. Kenny Hunter’s series of animal sculptures evoke East Lothian’s social history, from racing greyhounds to pit ponies.

Inside, Old School Fabrications created vibrant therapy rooms and woodland corridor spaces for children’s speech and language sessions. Bespoke Atelier’s designs reflect local natural flora in mental health wards. Simon Crofts and Sylwia Kowalczyk’s large scale photo collages, A Portrait of East Lothian, play with scale and space to create imaginative images that mix wartime defences, industrial slag heaps, forested back roads and epic coastal panoramas with contemporary portraits of hospital staff.
Patient/staff collaboration was central to the programme; the strategy was developed following public consultation and a team of patients, community members and staff, selected designers and reviewed design stages. Designers worked with staff and community groups throughout, exploring ideas and directing the form the works would take.

Evoking nature through contemporary art and design, the works take viewers out of the clinical space – sometimes confined and detached from the outside world - and contribute to their positive healing, recovery, and a more patient-centred approach to healthcare.

*Old School Fabrications commission was co-funded by Edinburgh Childrens Hospital Charity *