This is the first in a series of Spotlight articles focusing on the diverse range of people working across arts, culture, health and wellbeing and sharing some insight into their role, a typical day or their experience of working in the sector.
Alexandra McGregor is the Project Assistant at Grampian Health Arts Trust.
I started working with GHAT in 2019 as a volunteer Gallery Assistant in The Suttie Arts Space. This gave me the confidence to apply for the new Project Assistant role when it came up in March 2022, which I got.
The first project I assisted on was ‘Introducing the artists’, an exhibition of GHAT staff artwork in The Suttie Arts Space. I worked on the social media posts gathering and writing information around the artists exhibiting.
There have been several varied exhibitions since then, one of which was ‘Gloss Comfort’ where alongside the Project Manager, Tamsin Greenlaw, we had the challenge of installing artist Hélène Bellenger’s 140 A4 inkjet prints on dibond onto the walls of The Suttie Art Space. They were hung in a straight line and displayed in a coloured scale starting from red through orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and ending in pink.
It was great to hear some of the positive feedback from staff visitors and patients when visiting this exhibition and staff members talking to each other saying that they ‘liked the exhibition and thought it was a great space’.
The project that I have been primarily involved with is the Baird and ANCHOR Arts Project. There has been lots of learning involved in delivering an arts and environment project of this scale.
My first task was to research advertising methods for the various art commissions for the new Baird Family Hospital and the ANCHOR Centre being built on Foresterhill site.
The most recent part of this project has been assisting the artists in delivering creative activities for the engagement and consultation sessions.
In total, we engaged with over 400 individuals over 15 different clinical departments in ARI and the Maternity Hospital.
In my time as a volunteer Gallery Assistant through to my current role as Project Assistant, I have helped in the creative activities event held annually in The Suttie Art Space for the Medical Humanities Students.
We have had the students making paper perfume filters, group activities in which they created titles for artworks we had on display, and a potato and spoon race around the gallery.
This role has taken me in many different directions, I look forward to the continuation of various projects and to see them come to full fruition.
In the image Alexandra is pictured in the Gallery at artist Michelle Hannah’s exhibition ‘Alienation’
If you have someone that you would like to appear in the Spotlight on… series, please get in touch with nancy@achws.org