The Resilience Series are 3 new artworks that have been specially co-created and installed within the new Acute Mental Healthcare Unit, Havenside Ward, in Boston, Lincolnshire.
The work has been developed through a multi-year partnership between Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT) and University of Lincoln School of Creative Arts (LSCA) called The Art of Wellbeing, which brings together lived experience, professional artistic practice and local identity to create artwork that is rooted in community and designed to support recovery.
The site-specific artworks were co-created for the unit’s Wellness Café, Courtyards and De-escalation & Seclusion Suite, and designed through a structured programme of workshops running throughout the year leading up to the unit’s opening in March 2026.
University of Lincoln artist-academics Rachel Baynton and Dr Steve Fossey, led workshops with service-users, clinical staff, Occupational Therapy teams and experts-by-experience of Ward 12, Department of Psychiatry, Boston Pilgrim Hospital, and with local students from Boston College.
The workshops explored themes of resilience, safety, personal wellbeing and connection to place. Participants contributed through drawing, photography, collage and reflective conversation, shaping both the content and the purpose of the final artworks.
The designs for the public Wellness Café and Courtyard spaces draw directly on the expansive landscapes of South Lincolnshire and are designed to promote calm, grounding and a sense of belonging. Strong, wide horizons, water, and migratory birds appear as recurring motifs, referencing the open skies and natural habitats surrounding Boston, and the new Unit’s identity as a safe ‘Haven’. Twelve resilient varieties of wildflowers growing in and around Boston also informed the shape, colour, and composition of the work, and acknowledge the legacy of the community of Ward 12.
These choices emerged from discussions in which workshop participants described nature and local scenery as sources of comfort, orientation and stability. The work brings the outside world into the interior environment, supporting service-users to reconnect with the landscape of their community.
The De-escalation & Seclusion Suite required a sensitive co-design approach that carefully considered a difficult stage in recovery, and was guided closely by research, and informed by patient and LPFT team’s reflection and input. The artwork for this area uses softer palette choices, careful sensory detailing and gentle points of focus designed to support regulation without overstimulation. Through co-production methods we’ve balanced therapeutic needs of clinical spaces whilst maintaining the integrity of the artistic and co-creative processes.
Environmental responsibility has been considered across subject matter and manufacture – the finished designs transferred onto durable, weatherproof, sustainably produced CareDisplay materials suitable for outdoor use in patient safe formats. The work will be available to inpatients over many years while meeting LPFT’S clinical standards.
The Resilience Series’ co-created development represents both LPFT and LSCA’s shared, sustained artistic process, and a commitment to creativity, integration and collaboration. The work demonstrates the important role that the arts play in good mental health, and how sustained creative collaboration can enhance mental healthcare environments in practical, sensitive and meaningful ways – creating spaces that feel connected to community and supportive of recovery.
