Welcome

The Nightingale Project brightens up the environment in mental health services through art and music. We see it as vital to bring life and colour into a hospital or clinic setting to provide a conducive setting for medical and therapeutic work. To receive a patient in a hospital environment which is pleasant, cheerful, and welcoming can be seen as an essential first step in treatment, a fundamental contribution to the process of recovery. We are a charitable project that works with CNWL NHS Foundation Trust, a large mental health trust with many sites in the London area, to make the treatment environment more human and more uplifting for both inpatients and outpatients. We do this through putting on temporary exhibitions of high-quality art in waiting rooms, commissioning artists to produce beautiful works of art for permanent display in the wards, and through bringing musicians into hospitals to play live for the patients. The Project began at the South Kensington and Chelsea Mental Health Centre in 1998, and has since spread to numerous other sites. The Nightingale Project Fund is Charity no 1082989.

News: Pianist Stephen Hough plays for inpatients in hospital:
On 25 January renowned pianist Stephen Hough played at Park Royal Centre for Mental Health, one of CNWL’s largest Units.  The concert was open to inpatients from all the wards there, and they enjoyed a beautiful programme including Bach and Chopin – but also including some requests from the audience and a chance to ask questions of Stephen. Stephen has written this up on his blog. See also Past Projects page.

Current Exhibition: Paintings by Will Alsop

Will Alsop: A Sense of Enquiry

Will Alsop is one of Britain’s most prominent architects. He has designed buildings in numerous countries, including the Sharp Centre for Design in Toronto, the ferry terminal in Hamburg, and ‘Le Grand Bleu’ in Marseille. In the UK his buildings include Peckham Library (for which he won the Stirling Prize in 2000), and the acclaimed ‘Chips’ building in Manchester.

Painting famously plays a crucial role in Alsop’s creative process – some of his building designs begin as a splash of colour on paper or canvas. The Nightingale Project – of which he is a patron – here presents the first London exhibition of his paintings since 2002. Exhibition runs 9 December 2009 – 27 February 2010, at South Kensington and Chelsea Mental Health Centre, 1 Nightingale Place London SW10 9NG. Further information on our Events page.

Illustrated here: signed, limited edition giclee print, available for £350.

 Now Available:

New set of hand-signed prints by Quentin Blake

This year we have installed a set of pictures by Quentin Blake at Northwick Park Hospital entitled ‘Our Friends in the Circus’. Individually-made, signed giclee prints of these images are now available – see Sales page.

All proceeds from your purchase of these images goes to further the work of the Nightingale Project.

News: Fundraising Concert: Tickets now on sale

We are organising an exciting concert on Sunday 28 March 2010 to raise money for the Nightingale Project.
The concert will take place at Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room, and features the Tippett Quartet, one of the UK’s most exciting young string quartets, and the Korean-Spanish pianist Soojung Lim. The Tippetts will be playing Beethoven’s 1st Quartet and Korngold’s 3rd (which includes some of Korngold’s favourite melodies from his film scores) – and in the second half Soojung Lim will perform with them in the string quintet version of Chopin’s 2nd Piano Concerto. (Together with Stephen Williams, lead double bass of the Britten Sinfonia and English Chamber Orchestra). Indeed this will be the British premiere of the newly edited and published score of this piece, and is being played almost exactly 200 years after Chopin’s birth. Tickets are now available through Southbank Centre’s website.