Give to GOSH: How art is playing its part in treating the children of Great Ormond Street

The chlildren have created an animation that is the third in a series of projects at GOSH

Monday 28 December 2015 19:55

Children on the kidney ward at GOSH worked with an animator to create a video explaining the process of dialysis and kidney transplants

Children at Great Ormond Street Hospital have joined with artists and a top London museum to create a vibrant animation describing their experience of kidney dialysis and transplant.

The five-minute work, called Transplant and based entirely on the work of children on Eagle Ward at GOSH, came about as part of an effort to involve sick children in a creative process that would also help them better understand their treatment.

“We wanted the project to be a useful tool as well as a creative project for the children,” said Emma Middleton, curator of artists’ projects at the Foundling Museum, which commissioned the work. “The play workers at GOSH are wonderful and the idea was to make an animation that was a guide to dialysis.”

The animation is the third in a series of projects made with children at GOSH. It came about when the team from the Foundling Museum saw books that hospital play specialist Lynsey Steele had created with kidney transplant patients to help them understand their treatments.

Its aim was to support the work of play specialists in trying to make operations and procedures “a lot less scary”.

Middleton said: “We wanted the children to make it, as the aim was for it to be made by, for and about children undergoing dialysis and having a kidney transplant.”

Working with animator Shelly Wain, the children used their own experiences to create drawings and puppets. The team from the Foundling Museum used these to create an animation of the process from dialysis through to kidney transplant. Like the work of the GOSH play team it is designed to help children understand the painful process of their treatment.

Meet the patients and doctors of GOSH

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1/9Meet the patients and doctors of GOSH

Two-year-old Elliott is a “cheeky” little boy who has a Thomas the Tank Engine sticker on his Berlin heart machine, which has kept him alive since his own heart failed eight months ago. Elliott has two tubes pumping blood around his tiny body. It keeps him alive but the machine has left him confined to the wards of Great Ormond Street Hospital until a new heart is found

As the ward sister on Koala Ward, Melissa Strickland leads a nursing team with the challenging job of looking after children with craniofacial and neurological conditions. “You have to have all the skills and knowledge to do this job but personally for me you cannot do it unless you have passion but also compassion,” she said. “You don’t get used to the sad side of things but you do learn to manage it.”

Amy Willis carries a discreet black medical bag everywhere she goes. It contains the cutting-edge HeartWare device that is keeping her alive. A smaller, more advanced version of the Berlin artificial heart, it was fitted in April after she was emergency airlifted to GOSH from Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool. The device means that 14-year-old Amy can be home in Flintshire this Christmas while remaining on the heart transplant waiting list. She is doing well but 15 per cent of patients with a HeartWare device or Berlin heart die while waiting for a new heart, so money raised by the appeal will also go to help researchers identify ways to keep children alive while they await transplant

Lucy Young

Professor Myra Bluebond-Langner represents the vital work of the Louis Dundas Centre for Children’s Palliative Care, GOSH’s world-class centre dedicated to research and care for children with life-limiting illnesses. The LDC is named in honour of Louis Dundas, a four-year-old boy who died in “unspeakable pain” after suffering a brain tumour in April 2008. Its aim is to ensure that no child suffers unnecessarily in their final days. Money raised from The Independent’s Give to GOSH appeal will go to fund the team’s work to manage pain, and also fund vital research into palliative care in children across the whole of the UK. Professor Bluebond-Langner, who heads the research, said: “Paediatric palliative care is a relatively new field where practice has outstripped research. We look to change that.”

Together with with Professor Myra Bluebond-Langner, Dr Finella Craig represents the vital work of the Louis Dundas Centre for Children’s Palliative Care, GOSH’s world-class centre dedicated to research and care for children with life-limiting illnesses. The LDC is named in honour of Louis Dundas, a four-year-old boy who died in “unspeakable pain” after suffering a brain tumour in April 2008. Its aim is to ensure that no child suffers unnecessarily in their final days. “One of the worst experiences for a family is to witness their child in pain and discomfort, and for them to feel totally powerless to do anything about it,” said Dr Craig, a consultant in paediatric palliative medicine at GOSH since 2002. Money raised from The Independent’s Give to GOSH appeal will go to fund the team’s work to manage pain, and also fund vital research into palliative care in children across the whole of the UK.

Like most little boys, Rowan Pethard loves playing football. At the start of 2015 the seven-year-old Spurs fan baffled his doctors in Hemel Hempstead with a string of coughs, colds, tummy bugs, aches, pains and rashes. It wasn’t until quite late on that doctors discovered he had leukaemia. He spent two days in intensive care while he had emergency chemo. He has two years of follow-up treatment ahead. “He’s amazing, a little superhero,” his mum said. “It makes it easier for his father and I and his brother to cope.”

Joe Plimmer

Paediatric heart and lung surgeon Martin Elliott, 64, is one of the longest serving doctors at GOSH, leading groundbreaking research and treating thousands of patients over the past 30 years. His work has bridged the gap between surgery and research with skills ranging from heart-bypass surgery to correcting congenital lung disorders.

For Ralph the hardest thing about having to live at GOSH while he waits for a new kidney isn’t missing his toys. He has plenty of those and can terrorise the nurses by pushing his little red motorbike down the corridors of Eagle Ward. The hardest thing for the six-year-old is battling not to cry out during his nightly dialysis sessions. “It really hurts,” he said. “But the other kids are sleeping and I don’t want to wake them up.” Ralph suffers from nephrotic syndrome and is currently waiting for a kidney from his father, Nick. He’s called the kidney “Chase” and his parents, who have been trained to operate his dialysis machine, hope to be home by Christmas

Lucy Young

The strongest praise for Lynsey Steele, 33, comes from the parents of the children she helps. “The children here wouldn’t get by without Lynsey,” said Ralph’s mother Amie Frost. “If she wasn’t here then we’d have cracked up.” Lynsey’s role, which is funded by the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity and will be supported by The Independent’s Give to GOSH appeal, is to help children play and relax, but also to have the difficult conversations explaining their treatment

Ash Knotek

“We brought Shelly’s animation equipment on to the ward and the animation is based entirely on the drawings and puppets of the children,” Middleton said. “The logistics were tricky as we had a huge amount of kit and it all had to be cleaned for infection control as we moved from bed to bed and in and out of the wards. But it was well worth it.”

The team captured images of the drawings and puppets, which were turned into “moving parts” for the animation, which is due to be unveiled in front of an audience of children from Eagle Ward.

The Foundling Museum is devoted to the history of the Foundling Hospital, the UK’s first children’s charity. It shares with GOSH a dedication to allowing children to contribute to society, and celebrates the power of the individual and the arts to change lives. The work was carried out in co-operation with GOSH’s Go Create! arts programme, which makes a vital contribution to the healing environment that the hospital tries to provide for patients and their families. It is part of the family support programme for the hospital, which is being helped by money raised by the Give to GOSH appeal.

‘Transplant’ is on display at the Foundling Museum from 5 January to 27 March. The Museum is open 10am-5pm Tuesday-Saturday and 11am-5pm Sunday, and is located at 40 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ. www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk

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