Testimonials 

During my career I've had the amazing good fortune of working with some incredible people. Here's a selection of some of the wonderful feedback that they've generously given me about my work and our collaborations:

Emma Barnard is an exceptional artist. She prompts and questions our relationship with disease, science and physicians challenging us to open up to uncomfortable truths giving an audience an opportunity to see the otherwise invisible world of medicine. By exhibiting in hospitals it also affords the medical profession a reflection on what they do and a reevaluation of the patient as an individual. Her Patient As Paper project is exciting and highly original.
Dr Jake Abrams, National Art, Design & Media Teaching Fellow, Kingston University

Interactions with non-scientists makes you realise how isolating science can be, and gives you a chance to look at your research from a different perspective.  If you can’t convince someone of the importance of what you do, are you concentrating on the wrong thing, or are you just failing to communicate effectively? I found the resultant images and videos very striking and thought provoking.
Professor Abbie Tucker, Dean Postgraduate Research Studies, Centre for Craniofacial & Regenerative Biology, Kings College, London

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Emma Barnard's work was different from most at the show in being monochrome, expressively controlled, purposefully staged and behind this, there is a wealth of meaning. Ritual, symbolic clothing, angelic presence, mediation between life and death, healing via the hands. There were beautiful echoes of 17th century still life painting, also mediaeval ecclesiastical sculpture, which I found consoling. These are images which concern every human being from birth to death, directly or indirectly.  She goes beyond basic responses at the idea of surgery, to reveal wider dimensions.  In the realm of art as social commentary, this is more than mere description.

Roy's Art Fair visitor

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Thank you for such a helpful workshop. I could feel my expressive confidence growing from activity to activity. One spends so much time in medicine being afraid of going off protocol, or doing the wrong thing, not listening to instructions properly: it felt therapeutic to finally let go and doing something a bit looser and more creative. I initially found spending even 3 minutes on a creative activity stressful as I am so used to doing things for other people rather than for myself: by the end I was buzzing with ideas and could have doodled all day. It helped me think about how shapes can be felt, perceived and remembered – and then freely re-imagined. Massively liberating!

Dr Kay Leedham - Green

 

This is definitely the highlight of this semester. I’ve been going through a hard time but drawing lines (even as simple as the lines on my hands) suddenly reminded me of who I am, what I’m thinking and what I actually should treasure in my life. And the most fascinating part of being creative is that you don’t know what you’ll end up with on the paper which was what this workshop helped me to recall.  In a word it’s the moment of inspiration that I live for.
Participant - Experimental Drawing Workshop, Bush House, London 

Patient As Paper encourages doctors to reflect on the patient experience through art, challenging the doctor to respond to the feelings portrayed by their patients. This artistic study provides a valuable contribution to the evaluation of patient  experience.
Mr Abir K Bhattacharyya, MS DNB FACS FRCS, Associate Director of Medical Education (Surgery), Consultant ENT Surgeon & Royal College Surgical Tutor

Emma’s work is, as well as often beautiful and always arresting, a thought-provoking point of reflection, often with a strong performative or ritual sensibility (as in Primum Non Nocere). It represented a crucial conduit between the clinical space and the lives and experiences of the people who become patients, but also remain complex, feeling human beings with lives beyond their clinical identity. Her compelling images enormously enriched the experience of the workshop for our participants, and her participation and insight also played an invaluable part. I can’t thank Emma enough for her generous engagement with the work we are doing at Warwick.
Professor Liz Barry, University of Warwick, English and Comparative Literary Studies

It's been a privilege working with you!
Kate Dunton, Collaborative Teaching, Research and Learning Manager at Cultural Institute at Kings College, London

We are really pleased to support the work that you’re doing with young people around serious youth violence. Collaboration with a diverse range of communities and organisations is key to a successful violence reduction strategy. Being able to discuss the issue not just in a legislative or academic sense is really important in being able to share important messages and principles. We think your creative expression as seen by your previous work demonstrates how photography can carry some meaningful messages to help illustrate the problem of youth violence and knife crime in a different way. No single group of people can stop violence in our communities - it takes collaboration and communication across the board, and that absolutely includes through a medium of visual and creative arts as well.
Mr Martin Griffiths, Trauma Surgeon and Violence Reduction Lead, NHS England, The Royal London Hospital
Michael Carver, Lead Nurse for Violence Reduction – Emergency Care and Trauma, The Royal London Hospital

It's been a thoroughly enjoyable ride collaborating with artist Emma Barnard exploring via art the impact of hearing loss and dry mouth on patients.
Dr Mona Mozaffari, Clinical Research Fellow, Kings College London

 

 Loved Emma Barnard’s talk and found it very interesting. Makes you think out of the box and change perception about personality and thinking of the other people/patient and looking into the ways to develop the dealing in medical professions.

Kent Medical Humanities Network, 7th Regional Medical Humanities Seminar

Patient As Paper has proved to be a very interesting and thought provoking study since it has encouraged doctors to reflect on the patient experience and has challenged them to respond quite directly to the feelings portrayed by their patients. This has revealed unexpected thoughts and feelings associated with being in hospital, this objective study is giving us further insight to the emotional aspects of hospitalisation. For the medical staff this project has been particularly enlightening and educational. This is an innovative and different approach to hospital care.
Mr Guy S Kenyon, MD FRCS, Consultant Otolaryngologist

 

To be given the opportunity to explore the concept of both personal and professional resilience. The course gave me far more than

expected and has highlighted a number of skills for development. To understand that being creative or expressive is not something that you can simply turn on or off. With this in mind I will have more understanding in relation to the pressures a service user faces when joining groups.

Student, Increasing Resilience and Empathy through Photography Course, Medicine and Health Dept, Surrey University