Create & Chat together

On Wednesday 20th August members from St Christopher’s Create and Chat group joined together to see their art work exhibited

Jack Emsden, a Community Learning Facilitator at St Christopher’s, shares their experience supporting the exhibition and the value of the create and chat programme.

“We opened our exhibition on Tuesday morning at St Christopher’s CARE (Centre for Awareness and Response to End of life). Volunteers, community members and St Christopher’s staff gathered to eat, drink and celebrate.

Create & Chat is a community of patients, supported by volunteers, who meet once a week to share conversation and channel their experiences into art and creativity. Every month group members choose a new material to experiment with. This has included clay, charcoal, printing and weaving. One patient describes the group as their ‘safe space’, where they can share what’s going on with them and trust they’ll be met with empathy and respect.

To celebrate their work over the year, the group decided they wanted to put on an exhibition. They worked together to design this exhibition including coming up with a name. Many ideas were thrown around, but in the end we unanimously chose ‘We’re All on Pills Here’. This captures the spirit of the group, at once silly and ironic, but also unafraid to talk openly about the experience of living with life limiting illness.

When asked what the exhibition meant to them, the group were clear it represented huge collective and individual effort. The effort they put in to create this artwork. But also, the effort of joining the group every week when illness might make it more difficult to leave the house. The effort it takes to keep going and to break through the mental barriers that isolation and loneliness can build. As one community member put it, ‘It becomes harder and harder to do the things you used to do, so something like this means more.’

The exhibition is a record of the group’s collective experience of working together, laughing together, building a community together. It is also an act of remembrance and legacy for the friends we have lost. Some of the work displayed is by those whose who are no longer with us, but we will always be grateful for the time we had together, the love and care we shared.

We opened our exhibition on Tuesday morning, with volunteers, community members and St Christopher’s staff gathering to eat, drink and celebrate. We even had a Tim Tam Vs Penguin blind tasting contest! There was a great atmosphere, with community members seeing their work on display for the first time. One volunteer put it best when they said ‘there was so much joy in the room’.”

We want to thank all of the volunteers that have been a big part of the programme, as well as the dedicated members who contributed their time, art and stories with us.

If you would like to hear about more opportunities like this, email us at communityaid@stchristophers.org.uk.