Image: Ebony Wightman’s pilot contribution to the Radical Care Kit. Photo: Courtesy of the Artist.

Radical Care Kit (2023) Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation

The Radical Care Kit is currently in its pilot phase, and supported by the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation. Facilitated across the Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick and The Children’s Hospital, Westmead for 8 weeks (Monday 18 September – Friday 17 November 2023); the Kit is being evaluated by Monash University’s Art.Creativity.Education research group, who work in collaboration with the Art Program to determine the futurity of the Kit in the clinical environment.

Featuring three contributions by diverse practitioners Nadia Odlum, Hannah Donnelly, Omar Sakr and Ebony Wightman, the KIt centres First Nations, culturally and linguistically diverse, people with lived experience of illness, injury and disability and queer voice. The Radical Care Kit envisions a transformative approach to the art exchange within the clinical environment, placing emphasis on process over product. It hopes to foster deep connections between the patient or group, the art exercise, and the facilitator. Built as an accompaniment to art and play-based experiences that are offered in clinical environments serving as distraction and sources of transient joy, the Radical Care Kit seeks to facilitate lasting relationships within the larger Hospital community, including friends and strangers undergoing similar experiences with illness.

The Radical Care Kit underscores the principles of collaboration and time, with exercises that are often durational, it responds to and evolves with the young participants who shape its direction. By fostering these enduring connections, the Radical Care Kit aims to create meaningful and enriching art exchanges within the clinical setting.