Artwork helps provide warm welcome for service users
A staff member and ADHD service user has used her love of art to improve the welcome at Norwich’s ADHD adult service.
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust Peer Support Worker Elizabeth Thacker has focused her artwork on insects, drawing parallels with people who live with ADHD.
She unveiled her work on 4 September at 80 St Stephens, watched by members of the adult ADHD team.
Elizabeth said: “Insects are so beautiful but much maligned and misunderstood. Our survival on earth depends on them. Butterflies appear delicate but they have been around since the dinosaurs.”
She said that reminded her of people who live alongside ADHD. “We are misunderstood yet have survived a past with typically 200 more times criticism than our non-ADHD peers and this makes us some of the most resilient people around.
“We have also been essential to humans in terms of evolution because we are creative. We can see our subconscious in ways that non-ADHDers cannot, hence we can make connections between apparently non-related things, make sense of them and come up with original idea because of this. We’re also good in a crisis and we pay attention to everything.”
Elizabeth began her own recovery journey in 2015 when she attended the Recovery College. “In 2017 I became a peer tutor and loved it, the sense of progress and being able to give back was invaluable. In 2018, the opportunity to become a PSW came up and I welcomed this move forward into a career infused with meaning, giving purpose and a positive perspective to what had happened to me.”
She was asked to create the artwork by ADHD specialist Angie North. Elizabeth said: “I was working on a series of prints thinking about the endurance of insects and how misrepresented they are in Western culture. We thought that the work could be the first push into getting the residency programme going as people with ADHD tend to have creative powers and we would like to highlight these for people who are using our service.”
Angie said: “The work Elizabeth has produced is beautiful and we hope her art will provide inspiration to others and an optimism that living with ADHD can be truly rewarding. I am so proud to be able to showcase Elizabeth’s work and celebrate her creativity, and I thank her for her enthusiasm, time and commitment to supporting me with this project.”
Angie also encouraged others with a creative streak to get in touch and become involved in the project. (Email participation@nsft.nhs.uk )
Elizabeth has loved drawing and looking at art since she was a child. She said: “I used to create illustrated stories and factual books about animals as a child, took a GCSE in art and then an Illustration qualification in Glasgow and an art degree at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee in 2011.”
In her series of drawings, she celebrates the insects’ forms. “I made the pictures by drawing them in reserve on cardboard and taking a rubbing with beeswax crayon. For me, there is something soothing about teal, which is why I chose this colour.”
She now hopes people coming into the service and staff will be inspired by her work and see that having a diagnosis of ADHD has its benefits.
Elizabeth said: “As Rumi, a 13th century poet, says ‘after the night is over, there is work to be done’, so I hope to inspire people to work hard on their recovery, attend the Recovery College and read as much as they can. Recovery is possible and the fight is worth it.”
Deputy CEO and chief people officer Cath Byford said it was amazing to be able to harness talented artists to create a welcoming environment.
“We are very lucky to work with people who have such vision and ability. Elizabeth’s art represents much more than a something beautiful to look at - it’s about hope, recovery and creating a better life.”