The hospital needs spaces which are non clinical in which people can come and take stock of what is happening in their lives.
These quiet spaces often get filled with religious and spiritual paraphernalia which is not always welcoming if you don’t know what it is for.
Sharing information and making spaces interactive means people engage not only with the space, but with other faith traditions and beliefs systems. This encourages inclusivity, awareness and celebrates diversity and difference.
How?
Making time! Making a pledge to do something meant that I did not put yet another job onto the back burner. Make it public! I made a public declaration that I would move forward with this. Make it happen! I spoke to others, I engaged with the local community and I sat and wrote some information that I thought might be useful.
What?
People have engaged with the space more, they have picked up texts and have liked the fact that we are trying to embrace as wide a cross section of the community as possible.
Putting digi-codes on walls and providing textual explanations by themselves was not the point.
This is part of a massive movement in this hospital as we consider how we engage with people and to say, your beliefs are important.
This is a new way of thinking , a paradigm shift that has challenged us to consider the past, be decisive about the present and look to critically engage with the future.
Putting up information about beliefs or explaining symbols says they are important enough for me to talk about. There is still a lot of work to do, but we have started the ball rolling and even just today we have a new image in the space to write about!