Immortalising the tireless efforts of emergency service and NHS frontline workers

This project is ongoing and wise fully completed in October 31st 2023, when the exhibition term ended. The main part of the project that your funding went towards i.e. the making of the work has been completed and has had a brilliant reception.

The work was marketed internally by the Leeds NHS trust marketing team and featured on the BBC Leeds website. We organised an event on October 3rd featuring poet Ian McMillan and senior staff in the Leeds NHS trust delivering speeches to a mainly staff and family audience.

I was able to partner with York College and use their resources for casting the sculptures. This process proved the most difficult and I was unable to use the casts I made of the sculptures that had been coloured using pigments. This was frustrating but all part of the process. I was able to work with around 20 staff creating drawings of everyone and two sculptures. The clay modelling took five months for one of the sculptures and because I was so keen to use this subject because the pose reminded me of Degas’s Dancer.

Overall this has been a welcome success and I am currently devising a course I plan to deliver in my studio in north Leeds on clay model making and casting. I have already delivered a three day version in my studio and for an arts organisation which I will be able to use and develop on to a more structured three to four day course.

One of the drawings I made was also selected for the RBSA drawing prize in Birmingham. I did deliver a presentation to the Leeds NHS ICU ward staff and have a workshop planned for late September. There has been some difficulty in planning the latter any earlier due to staff schedules. I also have forwarded presentations for Leeds Beckett University, University of Leeds and Leeds Arts University and am waiting on their reply in the new academic year.

Paul Digby