QA Children’s Emergency Unit Art Project

A new Children’s Emergency Unit has been built at QA Hospital. It provides great facilities and enables them to treat more children.

Havant Rotary led a project involving all the Rotary Club’s in South East Hampshire raised £9,600 to help the nursing team create a child friendly unit that on possibly one of the worst days of their lives, helps to relax a child that is often scared and traumatised.

Zoe Parton, the Children’s Emergency Department Play Specialist explained the importance of a child friendly environment especially colorfully painted walls, as this puts children at ease but the wall art was not in the initial plans for the new department. The Havant President decided to solve this problem by raising funds with the help of his club and other clubs in the catchment area of the hospital.

The local Rotary Clubs have really come up trumps with their help to solve the bare walls problem. Havant Rotary donated £3450 which was mainly raised from collections at Tesco and Waitrose together with donations from companies and organisations such as HBC. Fareham ran a Call My Bluff Evening and raised £1405, Portsmouth and Southsea £1000, Gosport £500, Portsmouth North £1000, Southsea Castle £500, Whitely £500 and Fareham Meon £1000.

Lizzie Cornelius founder of icanseethesea ltd and a local artist has kindly donated a collection of her wonderful artwork which follows the theme of our beautiful City, Portsmouth and the sea. The artworks all start as an original painting and are then adapted to be printed in large format on vinyl.

There are underwater scenes, puffins, seagulls, octopuses, and the Portsmouth seafront including the Pier and Spinnaker Tower, in Lizzie’s unique recognizable style. Some pictures even cover a whole wall, such as the Portsmouth skyline this image is called “Life if Bryant” (see photo of Zoe) and also individual birds and animals scattered throughout many with quirky and amusing subjects. Lizzies very well known pink seagulls are deep sea divers complete with air tanks and one wearing sunglasses and flip flops!

So, a huge thank you to all those members of the public for their kind donations and to all the Rotary Clubs involved in helping to make this a successful project and enabling a magical child friendly environment which we all hope will make their hospital visit less stressful.

We recently had the opportunity to visit the unit and view the artwork, which is stunning. However, much more importantly the artwork helps to make a difference, and in a world where you are dealing with children in pain and ill, that difference is important.