The annual East Kilbride Community Arts Exhibition traditionally takes place in East Kilbride Old Parish Church hall to raise funds for the church. This year, we are delighted that the committee have decided to raise funds for Kilbryde Hospice at the 14th Community Arts Exhibition.

At Kilbryde Hospice, we appreciate how important art can be to individuals and we are delighted to have been selected as the charity to benefit from this year’s event! The piece of artwork designed for the event (which can be seen on the event flyer) incorporates the Kilbryde dove with East Kilbride Old Parish Church, and is named ‘Hope and Peace’.

One of our patients, Michael, has kindly chosen to share with us how important art is to him.

We asked Michael if he would like to share his art experiences with us as we thought he would make a real connection between Kilbryde Hospice and the Community Arts Exhibition. Michael, who describes himself as a straight-up, bohemian artist who learned everything about drawing from life, provided us with a sample of his artwork that he produced at a particularly bleak point in his life. The picture represents chaos, but also letting go of the unimportant things in life and finding out who we really are.

We asked Michael to describe his time at Kilbryde Hospice, and he has described it as one of the precious places where he does not feel like he has a target on his back with his condition. He continued to describe his experiences as “part of a community, it wasn’t until months in that I realised I’m the youngest person! I have always been welcome and treated equally by staff and fellow patients. Every last person contributes, even the quietest of us.”

Michael believes that he didn’t find art, but that art found him. Michael is now working on some artwork to enter into this year’s exhibition and he is looking forward to theming his artwork around the theme of ‘Hope and Peace’ – which we are so delighted to hear!

Everybody is welcome along to the exhibition, and any artists who wish to enter their artwork can collect an entry form from East Kilbride Arts Centre.