A celebration of nurses
Commissioned by NHS Trust of Guys and St Thomas’
Project On Hold
On the bicentenary of Florence Nightingale’s birth, I was invited by the NHS Trust to create a mural for a hallway at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. Nightingale was the leading voice in insisting that decisions – in public policy and private lifealike – must be grounded in our lived experiences. She understood statistics not as abstract numbers but as human stories of survival and suffering, and used them to transform nursing into a recognised, evidence-based profession. Thepandemic of 2020 affirmed the truth of her vision, revealing what – and who — is truly vital to the survival of our civilisation, and highlighting the irreplaceable role of nurses and midwives.
Coats of Arms for Modern Heroes
As an artist, I am fascinated by how societies decide which behaviours are worthy of esteem and how they choose to commemorate them. In medieval England, coats of arms were awarded to noble families as symbols of conquest and courage. I reimagined this heraldic language for the present, reframing the shield as a symbol for nurses and midwiveswho fight daily battles against disease, exhaustion, and pandemic. Working closely with staff from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust, I invited them to imagine their own shields, articulating shared values of compassion, duty, and courage.I then designed these shields in collaboration with them, transforming their words into emblems of collective identity and recognition.
Nature, Care, and Disappearance
Layered among these shields are pencil sketches of Britain’s disappearing native animals – hedgehogs, skylarks, and others whose roles in sustaining ecosystems often go unnoticed until they are gone. Their inclusion mirrors Nightingale’s fight for recognition of nurses: both the creatures of the countryside and the carers of our society are indispensable, yet too easily overlooked. By placing the two together, the mural makes visible a shared truth: only through observation, respect, and collective action can we safeguard what is essential to survival.
Project on hold
