Vital Arts and Central Saint Martins producing cookbook for dialysis patients

The Renal Unit at the Royal London Hospital is densely populated and whilst it’s design functional it does not contribute to an engaging patient experience. Patients on dialysis are those who have had kidney failure. They need a machine to clean and filter their blood. Dialysis takes five hours a day, three times a week.

Rachel Louis from Vital Arts, the arts and health organisation that delivers programmes for the Barts Health NHS Trust, collaborated with the Spatial Practices programme at Central Saint Martins (CSM) (communications designer Luise Vormittag) to establish a framework for future art and design interventions for dialysis patients at The Royal London Hospital (RLH).

The team wanted to explore ways of improving this micro-locality through activities and design interventions that enrich patients’ experience of being in hospital, creating a positive environment and a sense of place and community.

Vital Arts and CSM were awarded a Creative Voucher collaborative research grant from Creativeworks London to determine what kind of design intervention would improve patient experience on the ward. One of the pilot projects emerging from this research period was a set of recipe cards.

Patients on dialysis have a very restricted diet, which makes it difficult to prepare flavoursome meals. Non-white ethnic groups have a higher risk of developing kidney failure, and yet there are no recipe books available that reflect culinary and cultural diversity.

The sample cards are based on recipes sourced from the patient community on the ward. The project team found that patients at The Royal London – a culturally diverse group – hold a wealth of tacit knowledge relating to their restricted diet, as do the dieticians working on the ward.

CSM is now working with Vital Arts to develop the concept into a book and will assist in the development of a communication methodology to collect, organise and distribute the tacit and dispersed dietary knowledge of this heterogeneous group.

Apart from obvious benefits to dialysis patients this project has also provided Vital Arts with the space to think about new ways of generating income to support future activities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=2dmcT1YK8pk