Celebrating creativity, imagination, and design

Hosting the Awards Dinner, which was held in the Imperial Suite at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull, was DIMHN chair, Jenny Gill. After welcoming the evening’s 230 guests, she explained that prior to the awards’ presentation, Clare Allan, a writer, author, and mental health columnist, and a former service-user, would speak. Clare Allan’s first novel, Poppy Shakespeare, was published in 2006 to widespread critical acclaim, and later adapted into a BAFTAwinning television screenplay. Her second book, Everything is Full of Dogs, will be published in 2016. She has also published extensively in The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times, and The Independent, and lectures in creative writing at London’s City University.

In beginning her address, she said: “I remember really enjoying this conference last year; it made a tremendous impression how much thought, care, empathy, and creativity, go into designing positive healthcare settings. I have been on a few wards myself, and have thus experienced the shift from rooms with multiple beds – I was once woken in the middle of the night by a disoriented patient emptying an ashtray over my head – to single rooms with their own en suite shower, in itself a tremendous step forward in terms of providing an environment with therapeutic potential. Of course there is far more to it than that, and at last year’s event I learnt a great deal more.”

Clare Allan went on to cover some of her own experiences in mental healthcare inpatient accommodation – ‘good and bad’ – and emphasised her view that every encounter with the mental healthcare ‘system’, whether with professionals such as psychiatrists, clinicians and nurses, or with buildings – left an indelible impression.