Lesson plan case studies

A joint project run by Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College (HAHC) and Greenwich and Bexley Cottage Hospice (GBCH) is bringing art pupils and patients together.  

Pupils and patients spend a month getting to know each other via weekly visits. They discuss everything from love and friendship to illness and death. The pupils, in their own time, then create a piece of artwork which represents the patient. This artwork is essentially commissioned by the patient and is for the patient.

The work is presented to the patient and their family in a mini ceremony after going on display in a central London location. In the past, the work has been displayed in the National institute of Medicine and the Houses of Parliament.

Hannah Denham, Head of Art at HAHC, and pupils involved with the Hospice Art Project describe their experiences.

Students win prestigious Jack Petchy Achievement Award for their work with Dying Matters.

Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College and NCPC’s Day of the Dead conference.

The Art Department at HAHC linked with the National Council for Palliative Care (NCPC) in 2011 to develop a Mexican Day of the Dead project.

All pupils in years 8 and 9 focused their art lessons on this Mexican celebration. Pupils discussed the concept of death, funerals they had been to, the deaths of friends and family,  their own deaths, ideas for their own funerals and how they would like to be remembered.

They then made either a paper skeleton or a clay skull depicting a person who has died. Some pupils chose to depict their grandparents; other chose public figures including Michael Jackson and Lady Diana. Once the artefacts were complete, a group of pupils built altars at the NCPC conference and discussed the project on stage.

A great deal of ground was covered in this project, allowing pupils to open up about their ideas for their own death and to share experiences of death and funerals with pupils who had not yet experienced it first-hand.

Mossbourne Community Academy and St Josephs’ Hospice Lesson Plan Project

For this project, pupils from Mossbourne Community Academy linked up with patients from St Joseph's Hospice in Hackney, London.

The pupils spent five weeks visiting day patients at the hospice with one aim: to find out about each other; about each other's lives, hopes, dreams, what they are, what they were and what they want to be.

Once the pupils had spent time doing this, they were inspired to help the National Council for Palliative Care develop a lesson plan to aid teachers and pupils in discussing dying. The lesson plan was devised solely by the pupils based on the outcomes of discussions at the hospice.

"The hospice was nothing that I thought it would be. Previously, I had never been to one and had by the end of the day realised my misconceptions were so terribly wrong." School pupil. 

The students of Mossbourne kept a record of their experiences visiting St Joseph's. Read their diaries.