Delancey Funds NPG's Access To Art In Children's Hospitals Projects

The National Portrait Gallery is to embark on a major collaboration with London’s children’s hospitals having secured a three-year funding from real estate company Delancey.

The new funding will enable the Gallery to increase its commitment to access to the arts in London’s children’s hospitals. The only national arts organisation to provide on-going bespoke educational creative arts project at no costs to hospitals, the Gallery’s programme is now entering its fifteenth year. Including eighty creative workshops a year the Gallery works with photographers, writers and artists. For the past five years, the Gallery has created free activity books to provide creative arts engagement for young people in hospitals, specifically during the school holidays when hospital schools are closed and there is limited provision for young people.

Last year the National Portrait Gallery gave 3000 young people in four of London’s children’s hospitals a specially commissioned activity book of portraits and illustrations inspired by their favourite writers such as Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling, Douglas Adams and Malorie Blackman. The book called My Magical Journeys was launched at Evelina London Children’s Hospital with a workshop given by one of the featured writers poet John Hegley, and the book’s illustrator Lizzy Stewart.

Taking inspiration from its Collections, the National Portrait Gallery works in partnership with Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital,The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and Newham University Hospital.