NHS's 75th birthday: an unusual installation shows up at Royal Preston Hospital to celebrate

What is the installation?

Called 100 Voices, it is an immersive sound installation that has come to RPH to help celebrate the 75th anniversary of the NHS.

Created from five months of research, workshops and conversation with staff, patients, and visitors in twelve hospitals across four NHS Foundation Trusts, including Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, the piece is at RPH until Thursday, 30 November.

While at Preston, the unique installation will be located in the Chapel in a birch wooden roundhouse, where audiences will experience 360 degree audio, immersed in the voices of 100 people from different hospital communities reflecting on their daily lives and work, their challenges, joys, inspirations and losses.

100 Voice first opened at The Galleries in Bristol, and after Preston, will go to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and University College Hospital London.

When can it be visited in Preston?

Staff can visit at any time, day or night until November 30, and the general public from 10am-6pm Tuesday to Sunday, and 1-6pm on Monday 27 November.

What is the concept?

With reflections expressed directly by people rarely heard – those working in service, patients, visiting local communities and the invisible, extended workforce of the NHS – the 100 anonymous voices are heard as individuals and as a crowd, as a flock of voices and as a tidal wave of ideas.

Explaining the concept, Hazel Gould and Hannah Conway from the installation’s creators Sound Voice, said: “100 Voices is an immersive sound and music work in which we hear fragments of 100 conversations recorded in June and July 2023 in 12 hospitals across the country.

“We seek to represent a true cross-section of the incredible encounters we had during our time in the hospitals. The voices that we hear span age, class, race and gender, displaying the enormous range of identities, backgrounds, perspectives, and experience that congregate under the umbrella of the NHS. This piece aims to be an authentic snapshot of people, place, and time."

How does it connect to the NHS’ birthday?

Trust Doctor, Thomas Moors, also co-founding medical director of Sound Voice, added: “The installation could not be timed better in the year of the NHS’s 75th anniversary – it is a celebration of everyone’s contribution.

“The recordings from 100 different, personal stories are intertwined with song and music, their voice, their story, your ears, your attention. Let’s listen to each other and celebrate 75 years of the NHS, appreciate the great variety of roles and the richness we all bring.”

What exactly can be heard?

The installation focuses on 100 voices recorded in 12 hospitals, 100 conversations in music and in words – asking listeners to ponder what it means to have a voice, how do you listen and what do you hear?

Four operatic songs have also been drawn from the hundreds of conversations and reflections which have taken place across the hospitals. Voiced by the fictional characters of The Midwife, The Porter, The Patient and The Manager, these songs are interwoven into these voices with an original musical score. Each character explores what it means to have a voice, how we make ourselves heard and how we listen to others.

THE PATIENT: One patient in a bed on a busy ward. He listens more than he speaks.

THE MANAGER: Dealing with numbers and spreadsheets, the Manager knows that every statistic tells a story.

THE MIDWIFE: A dedicated listener, she has learned to understand languages beyond the spoken word.

THE PORTER: He carries people on the most important journeys of their lives.

Further information

The project has been funded by Arts Council England, CUH NHS Foundation Trust, UCLH NHS Foundation Trust, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UHBW NHS Foundation Trust, Britten Pears Arts and supported by PENTAX Medical.

Please be advised: 100 Voices contains honest descriptions of work in hospitals including themes of end of life and critical care.

Visit 100voices.uk for tour locations, dates and times, and for more information, please visit soundvoice.org

The piece has already been previewed by BBC Radio 3 on their Music Matters show on Saturday, November 11, available to listen to on BBC Sounds between 14:50 min and 25:55 min here.