Rivers Centre Project

Hellesdon Hospital is a mental health facility in Norwich. Between 2021 and 2025, Norwich University of the Arts worked collaboratively with Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) and the charity Hospital Rooms, to deliver a multifaceted creative health project as part of the development of three new wards and other facilities at the hospital, known as ‘The Rivers Centre’. Hospital Rooms commissioned 15 artists to co-produce museum-quality artworks for the new spaces, working with the hospital community across 70 artist-led sessions. 

Norwich researchers worked closely with the NSFT Lived Experience Team (LET) as co-researchers, to produce and deliver an extensive programme of creative workshops. Using creative, arts-based and material research methods, the lived experience co-researchers have engaged with a creative, critical and embodied retelling of the old and new hospital spaces by those who have and will live there.  

The project also involved co-producing an evaluation framework with the LET, and delivering a range of exhibitions, performances and conference papers. It is the biggest arts and health project that the University and Hospital Rooms have developed to date.

Outputs

Conference paper

The Rivers Centre Lived Experience Team and Dr Nicola Simpson delivered their conference paper ‘The Worlds of Interiors: Embodied retellings of lived experience in a mental health hospital’ at the international AHRA Body Matters Conference in November 2024. 

Exhibitions

Hellesdon Hospital and the Art of Recovery took place at Norwich’s Bank Plain building as part of Being Human Festival 2023, sharing found objects from the old hospital site alongside works produced by the LET. The exhibition was accompanied by a series of workshops for NSFT staff, service users and the general public. You can find out more about this exhibition and associated workshops by watching the video below.

Shape Shift: Reflections on Art in Mental Health Settings took place at the Fitzrovia Chapel in London in March 2025, presenting the artistic outcomes of both the commissioned Hospital Room artists and the Lived Experience Team. 

Shape Shift Converse Rework took place at Hungate Medieval Art in Norwich in July 2025, building on the Fitzrovia Chapel exhibition with additional programming of creative workshops and performances.

Events

An interactive online event, ‘And All Our Lived Experiences: Creating Co-Production’, was presented as part of the NCACE Festival of Cultural Knowledge Exchange in April 2026.

The event explored creative, ethical and authentic co-creation with lived-experience teams, informed by the Rivers Centre Project. Through a creative deep listening exercise, panel discussion and an exploration of workshop methodologies, the event aimed to support other researchers and cultural organisations to build more equitable, caring and impactful participatory research practices.