On International Nurses’ Day, the RCN opens its new exhibition ‘Unmasked’, telling real nursing stories during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Running in the RCN Library and Heritage Centre in London until 21 October, the Unmasked: Real Stories of Nursing in COVID-19 exhibition will showcase and explore the crucial role nursing staff played in caring for people during the Covid-19 pandemic and in past pandemics.
The exhibition will include Michael Rosen’s patient diaries. The famous poet and children’s author contracted Covid-19 in March 2020 and was put into an induced coma for 48 days. The nurses tending to him kept a diary and wrote him letters of hope and support.
It will recognise the personal and professional challenges nurses and other healthcare workers faced every day and looks at how they navigated difficult times, particularly regarding PPE, isolation within hospitals, and relationships between patients and nursing staff.
The exhibition will move to Edinburgh from November 2023 to April 2024.
Objects on display include items from the RCN Archive, from St. Barts Health Archives, the British Red Cross Museum and the Old Operating Theatre, as well as personal loans that reflect nurses’ experience of the pandemic throughout history.
The exhibition includes a large-scale ‘doodle wall’ bringing together visual artworks created by nursing staff during creative workshops run by graphic artist Federica Ciotti.
The exhibition also features an exciting partnership with national theatre producing studio, China Plate. Visitors will be able to listen to a series of new audio artworks co-created with healthcare workers through the Humans Not Heroes project.
As part of the exhibition programme, China Plate will be running a series of workshops, inviting RCN members to help create a new audio artwork to add to the series. Find out how to book your free place here.
The exhibition launches on Thursday 11 May 2023. Book to attend the free launch event here. Talks and activities will take place throughout the evening, from 6pm.
The exhibition is open to the public and free to visit.
See opening hours of the RCN Library and Heritage Centre.
A series of events runs alongside, including dance, performance and participatory creative workshops.
Full list of events: www.rcn.org.uk/whatson
