Volunteers 2021.
You meet someone with a pink or yellow and white striped shirt in the corridors, wards and other spaces of the hospital, and you are meeting one of the many volunteers who help to make the Maitland Hospital a caring and thoughtful place and who also help to raise money for specific projects within the hospital. They are part of a long list of people who, from early in the history of the hospital, have given time, money and services to the hospital. The story One of our best feelings … charity provides an introduction to this history.
As part of her commission to create a photographic record of the Maitland Hospital in the last twelve months of its life on the High Street site, Catharine Neilson photographed some of the volunteers going about their many tasks, details of their work spaces, and some of the items created and distributed by the volunteers. A selection of Catharine’s photographs are presented here.
To see photograph titles, hover over the images.
Volunteers at work
Volunteers’ building
In 2021 the Volunteers’ workrooms and offices were housed in the hospital’s former isolation ward. As with elsewhere in the hospital, there were traces of the building’s former uses and efforts to personalise and soften the spaces. As the hospital was being packed up for the move to the new site, parts of the building also became home to extra records and discarded equipment. Catharine’s photographs capture evocative details, odd moments, cheerful additions, and building features.
