Over the dark of January and between working shifts at the hospital and working with AOP Projects, Brenna AKA @Threadypulse designed and painted an incredible 360 degree mural in the cardiorespiratory area of the hospital; breathing life, energy and colour in to the space and transforming it from a traditional grey place.

Let’s take a step back in time to help bring this story to life and explain why it means so much to the person painting it and to the people who now sit in the space, waiting for a life changing decision, not of there making, and one that cannot be prepared for. Ten years ago, Brenna qualified to be a nurse with flying colours out of an Austin, Texas school of nursing with exceptional results, and her internal need to help and support others and put them and their loved ones at comfort was a qualified gift now with the academic detail to take in to her chosen profession of nursing. Spending long hours studying with a young child (Finn, now 12) was never going to be easy, but she tells me it was worth it for all the lives she’s been able to help save and shape since she first qualified. Brenna moved from the US to sunny Yorkshire five years later and after setting up home in York and settling her two young children she decided to join the NHS as an ICU nurse at York hospital. She became a solid member of the team and brought with her the excellent nursing skills and bedside manner to help the most challenging situations as well as her constant stream of amusing wit.

Then, as we all know, the world changed under the Covid-19 virus and the world came to a stop for most…but not for nurses and all of the key workers in a variety of sectors. Brenna and the ICU staff across the globe were hit with war time conditions, with the severely sick and dying being moved in and out like cattle with the families only able to watch from a distance as tired, over worked medical staff struggled to deal with the onslaught of patients.

Slowly the process breaks you down physiologically and it took its toll on Brenna, as it did on so many.

Following a short recovery period, Brenna decided to join the AOP team full time, and we have never been so happy to have her. It felt appropriate that her first full project was Guardians of York where she was nominated as one of the key workers to be celebrated in one of a series of larger then life murals curated around York city centre.

Sadly for Brenna, later in that same year, she almost lost her life to sepsis and found herself deep in the hospital being kept alive in the very place she had being doing her nursing job, just months before. Clearly she has made a full recovery and through the excellent care of amazing NHS staff she is here to tell her tail (and paint a mural).

When we were contacted by Chloe from the cardiorespiratory unit to ask if we could help brighten up the space where people, staff and patients alike tend to wait long hours staring into nothing, hoping for a brighter day, Brenna saw this as an opportunity to tell her story through the art of painting, and give a little back, creating a few more smiles.

Brenna is an artist, she’s a project manager but she’ll always be a nurse, and will always be wanting and looking to help those around her.

I hope we can all be a little more like Brenna and help brighten up the future when it doesn’t look so good…but for now we will settle for this amazing mural titled Echo. Please see full images and a quote from Brenna below.

“I have always loved being creative…getting busy with my hands. Whether digging a garden, stitching embroidery or painting small and large scale images, I have a need to create art. The opportunity to combine my artistic passion within the walls of the hospital that became a home-away from home…and also saw me there as a patient, “on the other side” as I sometimes think of it. It was a real honour to paint the walls of a space that was incredibly dim…the exact opposite of what you want when waiting to hear your name called for an uncomfortable test, procedure or set of news to be delivered. I am over joyed to have been able to deliver this 360 mural as a small token of my appreciation for the NHS, and the people who drive it forward, when it’s literally crumbling underneath us. I still feel privileged to work as a nurse at York hospital part time, and I really enjoy my other days, spent working at Art of Protest Projects, creating public art for the whole world to enjoy.”

ECHO: The Art of Nursing