Art to raise awareness

Visual responses to the patient experience of breast cancer

For 5 years I was employed as the Administrator for the Nottingham Breast Cancer Research Centre, a charity affiliated to the University of Nottingham. The charity supports and facilitates collaborative working between its members, who work to improve our understanding of breast cancer and to deliver novel diagnostics and therapies. Part of my role was to organise an annual event to raise awareness of the disease and also the work being undertaken at Nottingham. Given my own experience of breast cancer and the creative output generated during my MA studies (A Breast Cancer Illness Narrative), I had the idea to organise a group art exhibition as a rather different awareness event. This culminated in the Breast Cancer and Me exhibition at the Angear Gallery, Nottingham University, in October 2022. Through the lens of creative expression 15 artists brought individual stories, of lives affected and changed by breast cancer. The responses were imaginative, sensitive and thought provoking.
A selection of images are shown below but a full description of the artworks and details of the artists involved can be found at www.bcawarenessart.uk. Thanks go to the Breast Cancer Art Project and Lakeside Arts, University of Nottingham who supported the event, and also the BBC who delivered a live broadcast from the exhibition venue.
Following the success of the exhibition the artwork was also displayed as part of the poster exhibition at the UK Interdisciplinary Breast Cancer Symposium in Birmingham 2024, a novel way to bring the patient voice to a major breast cancer conference.