Hellesdon Hospital and the Art of Recovery

After almost 150 years the doors will soon finally close on the red-bricked Victorian building of the Hellesdon Hospital in Norwich and the service-users, staff and services will be relocated to the new purpose-built Rivers Centre.

This pop-up exhibition, curated with current staff and service-users, invites you, in the words of one patient, to get “curious about the story” of mental healthcare over the last three centuries and explore this through a selection of artefacts, documents and testimonies. In mental healthcare environments, where those judged to have lost “reason” were institutionalised, what can objects from the past tell us about that experience?

Over the week of the exhibition, in a series of artist-led workshops, individuals with lived experience of mental illness, their carers and families, and staff from Hellesdon hospital, will explore stories from the past and stories of the present to contribute their own voices to the exhibition and the legacy of the hospital.