The Heritage of Care

The Heritage of Care exhibition seeks to explore and portray the legacy of the early/longstanding volunteers in palliative care, in an effort to highlight the contribution that volunteering makes to hospice care. The show, which features archival material, oral histories and photographs from twelve hospices around the UK, will take place from 26 February to 2 March 2014 at Oxo Gallery, London. Bringing together photographs, oral histories and archival material, the project charts the trajectory of palliative care, from the rise of the Hospice Movement, pioneered by Dame Cicely Saunders in the late 1960s, to the ever increasing role that hospices play in the local communities nowadays. Featuring testimonies from both the early and todays carers and befrienders, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey through the everyday duties of volunteers, their relationships with patients and doctors, the support they offer to the bereaved, and the dramatic changes which took place in palliative care over the last five decades. The Heritage of Care is devised and curated by Eyes Wide Open, a London-based partnership community program which facilitates exhibitions and workshops around social themes. The project represents the achievement of 37 volunteers who immersed themselves in the Cicely Saunders Archives as Kings College Hospital. As if in an effort to reproduce the same archival experience, visitors to the exhibition will be able to dig through archive boxes, look at old photographs and read documents and articles.