Maggie Fowler
Visited Kettle's Yard with a colleague in 1970/71 as a student midwife. She remembers an unusual and warm welcome by Jim Ede. Jim influenced her appreciation of art. She visited a number of times whilst in Cambridge.
In 2004, whilst nursing on the oncology wards at Addenbrookes Hospital, she renewed her connection with Kettle's Yard, supporting a joint project with the Fitzwilliam Museum to take images of art work to patients' bedsides. At the time of interview she was continuing to develop this project as part of her role at Wallace Cancer Care.
By: Katie Maynard
Length: 30 mins
Media: On 1 track on CD with summary
Interview id: MYKY18
Therapeutic quality of Kettle's Yard, links with Addenbrooke's Hospital
View: Transcript Theme: House as artwork
Realising that light, and how you position things, and having time and quiet to look at something can be actually very therapeutic. I think that's what we found because, although nursing in midwifery you think it's all joyous but actually there can be terrible tragedy in midwifery and I think we just enjoyed looking at stuff and it lifting your spirit out of perhaps something that was quite troublesome at the time so I think that's what we enjoyed. And since then I've met other people and we are actually now involved with just that actually, it seems really weird that all these years later. So, then I had somebody from the National Gallery talking about art and taking it to the bedside and I just suddenly began to put these things together, remembering how I used to feel coming here, made you think, yes that can happen. You can look at something and by looking you suddenly see something and seeing is a very opening idea and I think I did learn it here, you know, all those years ago. But now we're seriously putting it into practice with Kettle's Yard, taking art to the bedside of patients that are very unwell on the oncology ward at Addenbrooke's and doing really what I did here, all those years ago, is showing people something and being able to say, well, what do you think? what do you see? what do you think? Art's about communication, that's all it is ever about I think so you see what you want, what does it matter?
Direct link to audio: .mp3
