Maternity, UHG

Working with a multidisciplinary team of colleagues, we developed a suite of environmental improvements across the Maternity Department of University Hospital Galway. These responded to the changing needs of the hospital demographic and acknowledged the impact that the physical environment can have on the way that news is given and received. The trees, flora, and fauna of Ireland feature in the artwork for three distinct contexts developed between 2015 and 2018.

In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a collection of twenty-seven artworks including privacy screens, wall and window art, references the enchanted worlds of storybooks and the lifecycle and daily movement of Irish wildflowers. Selected for their folk or traditional medicinal associations with the context, the ‘wildflowers’ movements suggest growth and the gradual journey of babies through the rooms of the unit. In St. Monica’s Seomra Ciúin, a canopy of birds and branches adorns the wallpaper as part of a significant refurbishment funded by the Design and Dignity Grant Fund. As the first in-patient bereavement room to be opened in Ireland, the single en-suite provides a protected area for patients and their families at a difficult time. St. Catherine’s Seomra Suaimhneas was developed in 2018 to provide a quiet space for people of all faiths. Addressing the needs of our diverse community, the room is a place for prayer or contemplation, which opens out onto an enclosed garden.