There is much history at RLH and yet so much still to make | Our news

As many of you know, there are a lot of wonderful works of art installed around The Royal London Hospital. A good deal of them were commissioned specially for The Royal London site. Catsou Roberts and Jessica Shiel who make up the Trust's Arts and Wellbeing service, known as Vital Arts, are responsible for directing and managing the art around the building and across the Trust. I was privileged to receive a guided tour from Catsou and Jessica. Of the many works they showed and discussed, the one that stood out most for me was the installation on the fourth floor. It is a work by the artist Roger Hiorns involving a series of clocks covered in copper sulphate crystals – something he has been renowned for.
 
Catsou told me when she and the artist were visiting Fielding House for inspiration they found the building abandoned and empty, a snapshot in time. The only remainder that grabbed their attention was the ticking of the clocks that had been left behind when staff moved out. They took the clocks and the artist went to work – you can see the results on the corridor near theatres. This location was chosen specifically, I am informed, because of the relationship between the suspension of time and operative recovery.
 
The reason this particular piece struck me is twofold: firstly, the crystallised copper sulphate takes a form characterised by many shades of shiny blue – not unlike our amazing Royal London Hospital. Secondly, the clocks within are a reminder of the legacy hospital and a marker of time itself, frozen forever within the blue crystals. I found this incredibly poignant. Within our building remains a section of the 300 year old underground tunnels – a reminder of the original Royal London Hospital encased within our shiny blue wonder. More than this, there is a huge sense of history here in Whitechapel – not just the inspirational characters who have influenced care over the centuries (like Edith Cavell, who applied to train as a nurse here in April 1896) but also the millions of patients who have received care and treatment, too. All of this resonates within the idea of what our hospital is. There is so much history at The Royal London and yet there is so much history still to make. How exciting to think that not only do we carry on the legacy of those that brought us thus far but we also lay the foundations for those that follow to see further and reach even higher.
 
Some of our teams created their own legacy this week at the annual BMJ Awards. Congratulations to our Violence Reduction Trauma Care team who won Prevention and Lifestyle Team of the Year at The BMJ Awards on Wednesday night. Our Children's Anorectal Physiology Service (CAPS) team were also highly recognised in the Diagnostics Team of the year category. A huge well done to everyone involved.
 
Dan Gibbs
Director of Operations
Royal London and Mile End Hospitals