Sensing Spaces of Healthcare: Rethinking the NHS Hospital

This is an interdisciplinary project that looks at the past, present, and future of the senses in healthcare settings. It is concerned with sensory experience, sensory design and how the two have come together over time. Ultimately the project aims better to understand sensory experiences in hospitals in order to improve them for everyone who spends time there. It also aims to raise awareness of the importance and value of thinking in multi-sensory terms - beyond the visual - for everyone from medical historians to hospital architects. This project still has the NHS hospital at its centre, but in the continuation period it will also think more expansively about how its findings and methods can be used in international contexts.

The first stage of 'Sensing Spaces of Healthcare: Rethinking the NHS Hospital' combined historical and creative research to better understand NHS hospitals from a multi-sensory angle (see 'Objectives' for the original objectives of this phase). This work included identifying challenges and opportunities in NHS hospitals. The PI's work has focused on the 'big picture' of particular challenges in the NHS and how they have been addressed over time, for example through publications on the history of 'noise' in modern British hospitals. The project RA has focused on site-specific creative research to understand current-day sensory experiences; she is working with a children's hospital outpatient's unit for young people with sight and/or hearing loss, and a 'maternity' department. Together, the PI and RA have developed new methodologies for exploring sensory memory and sensory experience in healthcare settings. These have included working with methods from line-drawing to explore sound in hospital 'atmospheres', to mapping and clay-based activities to explore questions around spatiality and healthcare touch respectively. In addition to traditional academic outputs, we developed two toolkits: (1) A creative research toolkit (by the project RA) and (2) a 'how to' guide for good sensory design (as part of a working group including architects, academics, and hospital arts coordinators). In 2023 we will hold a project exhibition and develop prototype responses to our research findings, working with designers to respond to key themes identified in the research.

From 2024 onwards, as part of the three-year renewal period, we will maximise the impact potential of our work to date, continue to develop new, novel methodologies, and generate new knowledge. Firstly, we will evaluate the work to date, including reflecting on the impact of our work, and the success or potential of our prototypes, at the two partner sites (Great Ormond Street Hospital and Southmead Hospital). We will also explore ways to 'scale up' the above research methods so that they can be used across the UK and internationally. The two draft 'toolkits' we have written will be tested with different potential beneficiaries - including internationally - and developed with a focus on inclusivity and accessibility. We also pose new research questions at this stage, which have emerged from and build on the work to date. We will seek newly to understand sensory memories of hospitals (led by the PI), adapting the creative methods used in years 1-4 to explore sensory memory. We will also ask new questions about neurodivergent experiences of healthcare settings, through a co-produced film with autistic staff, patients and visitors at East London Foundation Trust. The RA will newly focus on mechanisms for improving sensory design in healthcare settings, a process that involves not only sharing and adapting the toolkit, but also conducting research with potential beneficiaries to understand design processes and potential 'roadblocks' to good sensory design in hospitals. Throughout this renewal period, the PI and RA will continue to develop their leadership skills and independent research skills in order to meet the career goals of the FLF scheme.