Morningside Mirror Issue 3

the morningside mirror 03.2012 edition

Morningside Mirror was a magazine published by patients and staff at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital between the years of 1845 and 1974. This new edition of ‘The Mirror’ is part of Artlink’s contribution to examining the Royal Edinburgh’s 200 year-long history in the lead up to the hospital-wide Bicentenary commemoration in 2013.

If you would like to find out more about this and other related projects contact Anne/Alex on 0131 5376127 or email glasshouses@artlinkedinburgh.co.uk Contributors to 03.2011 edition: Kirsten Lloyd, Anne Elliot, Alex Wilde, Claire Barclay and Laura Spring.

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March

Spring is on its way, the buds are starting to form on the trees and the birds are beginning to sing.

It can only mean one thing...

Thursday 29th 12–1pm Picnic Lunch, bring your packed lunch.

Venue: The Glasshouses 10am or 1.30pm Guerilla gardening. Meet at the Glasshouses to get out and about the hospital to put some plants in strange places. Gorilla costumes not required (but fancy dress welcome).

Thursday 29th March – Thursday 26th of April 1

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1 The Glasshouses.

2 Very over wintered nasturtiums in Glasshouse 2.

Growing Month programme

3 Maggie – stained glass painting and sign

by Anne M. 4 Valerie, Garden Club volunteer.

Yes, that’s right, this year Growing Week has grown into Growing MONTH. Whether you fancy trying your hand at flower arranging, building a bird box, paying a visit to the house-plant doctor or even having fun with guerrillas, there’s something for everyone in the jam-packed programme. Turn to page three to find out all the details and see how you can take part.

For this edition of The Morningside Mirror I’ve been invited to come along to the Royal Edinburgh and meet some of the people who have been involved in the Glasshouses and write about some of their activities. It’s been a real treat to discover all of the amazing creative work that goes on in the Glasshouses and to find out about some interesting talents in the Royal Edinburgh’s community.

Also,REMEMBER...

April continued

Monday 23rd 10am–12pm Learn about what flowers make a good hand cream, what herbs make a nice, soothing tea. Simple ideas for everyday use of herbs and flowers. Look out for Vicki with the healing herb trolley in the morning. Book Vicki for a workshop on your ward in wards in the afternoon, contact Alex or Anne for more details.

Tuesday 24th April 10am–1pm Get some fresh, healthy snacks at Thursday 5th the fruit and veg stall.

1–3pm Create willow structures for your beans, 1–2.30pm Want to learn the basics of gardening? peas or flowers. Venue: The Glasshouses Come along to a five week course with Artlink, 6.30–8pm Cookery demonstration on healthy, the Volunteer Hub and the Royal Edinburgh tasty cooking that you can do at home.

Community Gardens.

Venue: The Glasshouses Wednesday 25th Thursday 12th 1–3pm Learn flower arranging from professional 1.30pm Meet at the glasshouses Art trail – Take a short walk round the grounds near the florist Pati. Bring a vase if you have one. glasshouses with Anne and discover art works Venue: The Glasshouses in unusual places.

Saturday 14th 10am–4pm Join Tom and Anne for a relaxed day Thursday 26th 1–4pm Trip with the Hive to the Botanical of gardening at the Growing Plots. Tools, gloves, Gardens To book your place contact the Hive plants, seeds and refreshments supplied on 46256 Tuesday 17th 12–1pm Picnic area lunch club. Bring your lunch 1–3pm House plant doctor. Tom the gardener will show you how to nurture your office and and eat while we meet. We want to improve our ward plants back to full health. picnic area at the back of the glasshouses and we want your ideas. Staff and patients welcome.

Regular activities Wednesday 18th Mondays 10.30–12pm in the Hub 1.30–3pm Gardening workshop at the Growing Feed the birds. Make bird feeders from recycled Plots with Anne. Tools and gloves provided. materials with the Volunteer Hub. Tuesdays Venue: The Glasshouses 8.30am–2pm Edinburgh Food Initiative Fruit Thursday 19th and Vegetable stall next to the WRVS shop.

1–3pm Find out why worms are so important 11am–12.30pm Anne and Debbie’s plant stall to growing plant and help build a wormery for alongside the fruit and veg stall the glasshouses.

Thursdays 1–3pm Garden club at the Glasshouses.

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The Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens have drop in sessions three times a week at their garden by the Myreside Rd entrance.

Get in touch with Sean or Hillary if you would like to go along on 46232.

Bike Week will be coming up in April and the popular Dr Bike will be back so you can get your bike ready to spring into action and cycle to work Contact glasshouses@ artlinkedinburgh.co.uk Growing Spaces exhibition This year we are getting dirty!

It’s all about soil, what’s in it, how it is made and what makes good soil to grow plants. The gallery will be transformed into an underground experience complete with worms, roots, bugs and other wildlife.

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Call for contributions

We are looking for crafty projects to include in the exhibition; knitted worms, crocheted beasties, embroidered leaves etc.

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5 Rob – Staff Nurse planting vegetable seeds for Craiglea Growing Plots.

6 Anne M – Garden Club member.

7 Jim and Valerie – regular Garden Club volunteers.

If you would like your work to be included drop it off at the glasshouses by Tues 10th April If you want some ideas or help you can join our art workshops on Tues 4th and 10th 10.30–12pm or Wed 5th and 11th of April 1.30–3pm The exhibition will open on Wed 25th April 11am–12pm.

Last chance to add your art work and look out for a surprise guest.

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THE ART OF GARDENING Since the Glasshouses were officially re-opened in January last year we have been making the most of the new space and a programming group has been established to encourage even more of you to do the same. It’s become a real hub for the Royal Edinburgh’s community: a place where you can try your hand at painting or woodwork, feed the birds, make an artwork for a ward, share a picnic, learn about plants, or even build a house for worms (more on that later).

At the heart of it all is Anne Elliot. A painter, photographer and keen gardener, her work at the Glasshouses merges her passions together under one roof. Bursting with new ideas, she works with the Glasshouses Programming Group to think up ways to make sure that the spaces are a welcoming and inspiring environment that everyone can use. Together with Alex Wilde from Artlink, they think up new ideas for fun events and creative projects for the future.

It’s warm and bright and there are plenty of art materials that you can try out. As part of its creative programme you can take also part in gardening classes, Come Dine with Me events or work on one of the growing plots run by Artlink.

You see, there’s an art to gardening!

When I visited the Glasshouses I found Anne working away with Giuseppe who was decorating his colourful wooden sculpture, Jill creating a beautiful stained glass work in transparent Perspex to cheer up her friend’s office and Tamur who was drawing a stunning portrait using oil pastels.

For Anne, these art groups are one of the best parts of her job, but what are her ambitions for the future of the Glasshouses?

She wants to go bigger and better. If she can get the space and the time expect some big-scale outdoor sculptures which mix art and gardening in even more inventive ways as well as more creative workshops. But the most As well as regular art workshops important question for me is: on wards, you can get involved What is Guerrilla gardening? by coming along to one of the We’ll have to wait and see…. drop-in art sessions at the Glasshouses on Tuesdays and Wednesdays where Anne and her team will help you get set up and explore your creative side.

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GET INVOLVED: IN THE GLASSHOUSES. MAKE A SCULPTURE FOR THE GARDENS, GROW THE TALLEST SUNFLOWER OR SIMPLY COME AND FEED THE BIRDS.

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8 Jill painting stained glass in the studio.

9 & 15 Portrait drawings by Tamur.

10 Tiger drawing

by Gareth.

11 Giuseppe painting his totem sculpture.

12 Grace and volunteer Richard modelling hand embroidered Growing Spaces aprons.

13 Anne M and Anne planting seeds at Garden Club.

14 Aileen with her landscape watercolour painting.

Who is in the Glasshouses Programming Group?

Artlink: Anne Elliot & Alex Wilde (Managers of the Glasshouses space) Patients Council: Ronnie Jack and Eileen Hay Hive: Julie McPherson OT staff: Heather Spenceley Spiritual Care: Maxwell Reays Dietician: Tara Hargreaves Estates: Tom Arnott Community Gardens: Sean or Hillary Volunteer Hub: Angela Farr Nursing: Rob Crispin We are interested in hearing your suggestions for activities which could take place in the Glasshouses.

If you have any suggestions then get in touch with Alex on 46127 or email glasshouses@artlinkedinburgh.co.uk

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THE ROYAL EDINBURGH’S GOT TALENT

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Creating Spaces Maxwell Reay chats about a special project he organised together with Artlink artists Claire Barclay and Laura Spring.

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Fancy Volunteering?

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Angela Farr and Katie Smith from the Volunteer Centre at the Royal Edinburgh can set up opportunities that will suit your interests and help you learn new skills. If you fancy trying a spot of volunteering why not pop along for a chat with them?

Meanwhile, Angela tells me about one of her favourite projects…

Anne and Debbie’s Plant Stall is a fantastic link between the work that goes on in the Glasshouses and the rest of the Royal Edinburgh community. It has been a huge hit and it’s back for this year’s Growing Month. Lots of energy has gone into expanding the stall over the past few months. To try and satisfy demand, five volunteers have been working in the Glasshouses to get ready for this Spring’s extravaganza which will include bird feeders and dried herbs alongside the flowers and plants.

Come along...

Have a peek at their wares on Tuesdays between 11am and 12.30pm. The Plant Stall will be up and running from the 13th March.

MAGICAL MOMENTS WITH Ewen Meldrum

If it’s patience you’re after then Ewen Meldrum is your man.

The Technical Instructor for Occupational Therapy at the Orchard Clinic has made his name creating amazing ‘time-lapse’ films which have been shown on the BBC.

Ah, a bit like one of those flick books. What do you like to make films of these days? I love walking in the Pentland Hills.

This way I can set the camera up, look at the view, watch the weather rolling in and wait for the sunset.

What is the significance of this stone, found within the grounds of the Royal Edinburgh?

GET IN TOUCH...

If you know the stone’s history. Otherwise look in the next Morningside Mirror for some information on the stone from our resident expert.

Now that the Quiet Room is complete, I’d like to set up a music group in the Glasshouses. The twist is, people will be invited to share the tunes that they like or that have some importance to them. This way, even people who don’t consider themselves to be musical can come along, select a song and chat a little about why it’s so special to them.

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How patient are you? Well if you’re on top of a mountain in the middle of winter shooting night time sequences it can get pretty cold! My brother and I once camped on top of Stac Pollaidh in the Highlands of Scotland. We were perched on a really small strip of land with steep drops of 400 feet on each side but we got great footage. When you shoot films like this you can see things that are usually invisible, in this case the camera tracked the night sky and when we played it all back we could see the star trails that were created as the earth turned. It was a magical moment.

Could you make a time-lapse film of the Glasshouses or the allotments? I would like to do that. All I need is a safe place to fix my camera...

Ewen’s incredible films can be seen online here: www.youtube.com/user/meltec2/videos Or you can see his photographs on his flickr site: www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=ewen+meldrum&m=text

Worms & Wellies

Creative Freedom There’s nothing that Maggie Keppie can’t do: songwriter, painter, furniture-maker, sign-writer and poet (television star Joanna Lumley once paid compliment to her “nice turn of phrase”), Maggie has done it all. But it was only a few years ago that she first discovered her hidden talents and tapped into the powers of her imagination. Since then she’s presented exhibitions, performed in public and contributed her skills to lots of art projects throughout the Royal Edinburgh and beyond.

Maggie says that she particularly loves the creative freedom of the Glasshouses provides. She is now turning her talents to decorating the roaming cart that will sell herbal teas and special hand creams as part of Growing Month – keep a look out for it in a corridor near you.

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the Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens What on earth is a wormery?

This was just one of the questions I found myself asking Sean Jacques when I visited him and his team in the Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens.

It turns out that wormeries are boxes for leftover food waste and that worms are nature’s magical waste disposal system.

When did you first start working with photography? I started getting into it when I was in my teens, I turned my bedroom into a darkroom. It was great, I closed the room off and was in there all day with the magic of the camera, the chemicals and the paper.

Have things changed a lot since then? Well, the digital age has made things a lot cheaper! I don’t print images anymore, instead I make time-lapse films. This involves taking lots of shots of the same scene over a few hours and then playing them together so that it looks like time has been speeded up.

What is this?

The transformation of the Quiet Room involved the work of more than 20 people from across the Royal Edinburgh Community between October and December last year. We all really wanted to create a bright yet cosy relaxing environment where people of any faith or no faith would feel welcome.

After a few sessions where people experimented with ideas, we moved on to screen printing sessions in the Glasshouses. It was here that the initial sketches and designs were magically transformed into a colourful reality. I’d say that the beautiful curtains, wall hangings and cushions that this communal effort produced have really given the Quiet Room a new lease of life.

Munching away happily, they transform everything from potato peelings to eggshells into rich fertiliser for the gardens.

Sean has been showing people how to build their own simple wormeries in sessions held in the glasshouses. So far 25 participants have left with their own box and he’s making up 22 more kits ready for future workshops.

But if building luxurious palaces for worms doesn’t appeal to you there are plenty more things you can do to test out your green fingers in the Glasshouses during Growing Month. Sean will be helping out with the gardening course starting in growing month and teaching people about seed sowing and taking cuttings.

I spoke to Sean during one of the drop in sessions that The Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens run three times every

week at their garden by the Myreside Road entrance.

The sun was shining and his eager team were planting out vegetable crops for the Summer.

Of course, the weather isn’t always so idyllic here in Scotland and Sean says that he’s careful to save the work needing done in the Glasshouses for rainy days. So when it’s not so nice outdoors, they head into the dry warmth to plant some tasty vegetables.

Come along...

...to the Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens anytime between 10am–4pm on Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday.

For more information please contact Sean Jacques on sean.recg@googlemail.com or Hillary Vipond on HillaryVipond@cyrenians.org.uk or call 46232

17 Artwork by Ewen.

21 Maxwell next to the artwork in the Quiet Room.

18 Ewen Meldrum.

22 Maggie making art.

19 Artwork by Ewen.

23 Sean, RECG Coordinator.

16 Yet another photo of Anne M!

20 Maggie ‘diggin it’ at the Garden Club.

24 Inside a wormery.

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