I’m going big on this post because it’s important to remember how the great things that you really admire were once were just a small nub of an idea in someone’s head and somehow they made it happen. Isn’t ‘possibility’ the most wonderful and uplifting thing?

I was excited to see that Southampton City Art Gallery has an online exhibition by Hospital Rooms which I hope you will take the time to visit.

In recent months, galleries and museums have been so brilliant at getting exhibitions on to our screens and allowing us to see work that we might not have seen in the real world, even outside of lockdown. But, in this case, Hospital Rooms’ amazing art is generally not seen by the wider public as they create beautiful pieces by world class artists inside mental health units.

Niamh White and Tim A Shaw started the project when a close friend was sectioned. Appalled by the sheer drabness of the treatment environment, they set about bringing together artists from well-established names such as Julian Opie to emerging artists to work with the units’ experts to make these spaces more up-lifting, inspiring and, crucially, to show those being treated that they matter.

I am super lucky to be receiving artist support via New Platform Art and luckier still that Niamh and Tim are among my mentors.

Art can be healing, uplifting and restorative and Hospital Rooms takes that power of positivity to arguably those who need it most.

Please do take a look.