Not all volunteer initiatives can be easily classified into types of volunteering. For example, the creators of the "Merry Corridor" project call themselves art-social volunteers. About how a group of volunteers decided to donate bright colors to the walls of children's hospitals - in the material of the special project "Year of the Volunteer".
The history of the "Merry Corridor" project began in 2012, when the board of trustees of the Morozov Hospital decided to invite artists to paint the walls in two departments. They decided to turn the usual plain walls into beautiful and bright ones to improve their mood and make the stay of little patients in the hospital more comfortable and joyful. At first, no one thought about a full-fledged volunteer project, they just wanted to create a comfortable space for children in the hospital.
Then, at the end of 2012, before the New Year holidays, the first post about the search for volunteers to paint the walls of the hospital was published on social networks. About 20 people responded to the cry, 15 volunteers got to the painting of the walls. Among them is the artist Anna Rumyantseva, who later became one of the founders of the "Merry Corridor" project.
“We split into two groups (by departments) and worked all the holidays. in the continuation of wall painting in children's hospitals ", - Anna Rumyantseva recalls.
Member of the initiative group of the "Merry Corridor" project Elena Filimonova
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" project
At first, according to the project, it was supposed only to paint the walls of the Morozov hospital, but then, as the volunteers joke, all the walls there ended, and the project began to expand.
"Together with the Korablik charity foundation, with which we cooperated at the time, we turned to the Health Department with an offer to participate in our project and other hospitals in Moscow. The Department helped us a lot by informing medical institutions and organizing a meeting with interested leaders of these institutions." , - says the artist, member of the initiative group "Merry Corridor" Elena Filimonova.
With each new painting, the project gained popularity and attracted more and more medical institutions... In the "Merry Corridor" they try not to deny the hospitals to paint, but in order for the volunteers to paint, some criteria must be met. For example, the walls need to be repaired so that paint does not fall off.
Member of the initiative group of the "Merry Corridor" project Olga Sutemyeva
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" project
"Also, the hospital management should provide us with a room for storing paints, brushes and other tools and equipment," says Elena Filimonova.
Painting a large department of a hospital, depending on the complexity, can take from six months to a year. Now, as the organizers of the project say, a whole queue has lined up to paint the walls. But, perhaps, very soon the project volunteers will be able to paint the walls at the same time in several hospitals.
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" project
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" project
Recently, the project entered the Union of Volunteer Organizations and Movements (REDD) and thus acquired a legal status and new opportunities, in particular, to attract donations.
"All this gives us reason to hope that in the near future, the" Merry Corridor "will be able to simultaneously make paintings in several hospitals and our" queue "will move much faster. REDD will also offer us cooperation with institutions in which other volunteer projects are being implemented," - said Elena Filimonova.
So far, the geography of the project is mainly limited to Moscow and the nearest Moscow region. But there are also cases of cooperation with medical institutions from other regions.
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" projectVolunteers of the "Merry Corridor" project
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" project
"In 2016, we collaborated with the Live!" Charity foundation, which, inspired by the activities of the "Merry Corridor", decided to paint the walls of the oncology department of the Tula regional hospital. And at some point, the guys called us for help, realizing what they needed. " a powerful and experienced assault force "in order to advance and successfully complete the work," notes Anna Rumyantseva.
The activities of the project over the past five years have inspired caring people from all over Russia, and now in the Smolensk region, Bryansk, Samara, in the Urals, volunteers are also painting hospital walls.
During the painting of the very first objects, the style of the "Merry Corridor" had not yet formed, and drawings in different techniques could well appear on the neighboring walls. But gradually the project participants came to the principle of coloring by numbers. When drawing, you need to paint over with a certain color the outlined piece of the wall with a number. This style of painting is considered the most suitable for mass painting, and even those volunteers who absolutely do not know how to paint can take part in painting.
Any participant in this process feels that he is involved in the beauty and benefits, that this wonderful painted wall also contains his work, and such walls look like those painted by a professional artist in a flat style. Artists prepare the wall for painting in advance, breaking it into pieces, like batik or a mosaic, where each piece will be painted with its own color, "says Olga Sutemyeva, an artist and member of the initiative group.
there are no age restrictions for the volunteers of the Merry Corridor. Schoolchildren with students, and older people, and even the smallest, take part in the project.
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" projectVolunteers of the "Merry Corridor" project
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" project
“Once my seven-year-old nephew Roma came to the painting. He watched how the sketches were created and took an active part in their development. He was one of the main kids in the focus group! it will be very interesting for the boys. And when the drawings were applied to the walls, Roma painted over his piece with trepidation and joy, "recalls Olga Sutemyeva.
“Once five-year-old Nastenka, who was held by her grandfather, dropped in to see us. They came to the hospital to visit Nastya’s younger sister and really wanted to see what was going on there, behind this door with the sign“ Merry Corridor ”?! We are hospitable and friendly. As a result, Nastenka painted all the butterflies very beautifully for us! In the "Merry Corridor" it is impossible to resist picking up a brush, "said Ekaterina Trofimova, a member of the initiative group of the" Merry Corridor "project.
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" projectMusician Noize MC took part in the "Merry Corridor" project
© Photo courtesy of the "Merry Corridor" project
It happens that celebrities come to paint the walls and talk to little hospital patients. For example, the musician Noize MC took part in the painting in the Morozov hospital. Seeing an idol for children in the hospital was an unforgettable experience.
"The guys, of course, enjoyed it, but the girls who were lying in the next section got even more pleasure. They walked past the drawing Noise and almost went crazy with the presence of their adored singer nearby. It was interesting experience, and many thanks to Ivan and his team for taking part in the action ", - said Anna Rumyantseva.
The "Merry Corridor" can hardly be attributed to any specific type of volunteering, there are elements of both cultural and social volunteering.
Typical buildings with typical interior design are a thing of the past long ago. Every kindergarten, children's hospital, studio or other institution seeks to create unique interior which will delight their little visitors. This is very important, because children perceive the world differently from adults. For them, the dental office will not be scary if its walls are decorated with pictures with animals, beautiful teeth or other positive subjects. And they will be happy to go to kindergarten if they are also present there. baby decoration walls and at the doorstep they are greeted by a picture with Carlson, Crocodile Gena or other favorite characters.
Kindergarten wall decoration undoubtedly requires a creative approach. If you cannot decide on your own how to use the stickers, you can contact the specialists of our company. Our experienced and creative designers will help you sketch unique design premises. They really understand the tastes of the younger generation and will tell you which pictures are best to stick for a particular age group kids.
Not only children's institutions buy stickers. They can also be applied in the interior of a children's room to create a cozy atmosphere for kids, arrange bright accents, to make the room more interesting for its little owner. For home use, mostly small or medium-sized pictures are purchased. They can be placed side by side on the wall, creating a composition, or pasted in a chaotic manner on all four walls, ceiling, cabinets and bedside tables. Sometimes whole panels are created from interior stickers, they are glued around the perimeter of the room in the form of a dividing border between the wallpaper. different color, between the wall and the ceiling.
Wall decoration in the garden may differ from home use of decorative stickers. Small pictures are bought mainly to decorate furniture. If each cabinet or chair has its own image, it will be easier for the kids to navigate and find the right piece of furniture. Large stickers can serve original decoration for a bedroom, an assembly hall or a dining room. Whichever of the options you choose, children's wall decoration will certainly delight children for a very long time!
List of the walls of the hospice of the Martha-Mariinsky Convent. Responsible, difficult and subtle was the task of the artists, who were entrusted with decorating two large chambers in the children's hospice. I would certainly like to note the very high-quality and complete filling of these chambers: from furniture and special equipment to refrigerators, plasma panels, to pretty ceiling lamps, sconces and good plumbing. Decent color and graphics ceramic tiles bathrooms. Calm and optimistic (as far as possible this term in a hospice room) color of curtains on the windows, color of bedspreads and sofas, delicate coloring of the lower part of the walls of both wards - all this indicates that the choice was not accidental, professional work architect. In one of the chambers, the architect proposed his own version of a "watercolor", in some places extremely "foggy" wall painting depicting good animals: a fox with foxes, a couple of hares, a deer with a deer and a fawn. The complexity of the execution for the artists consisted in finding a compromise in the naturalisticness of their poses and positions in the painting space and in the architect's request to leave them some "cartoonishness" with an absolutely "watercolor" background of the painting. It should be noted that cartoonishness is necessary in this real situation (the ward was intended for the smallest patients), but it was necessary to maintain a balance of visual means. In addition, the artists had to paint the background in a rather peculiar way, not only preserving its lightness, but also giving it some materiality, which made it possible to create a single pictorial space, somewhat modifying some details of the sketch, but developing its main components as a decorative wall painting. In another chamber, the walls (0.8 m from the floor) and the ceiling were covered with airbrushing paintings. In such a size, airbrushing painting requires special care in elaboration, which, naturally, requires a lot of time, which the artist who painted in this technique did not have at all, apparently. As a result, blurred boundaries, uniformity in the elaboration of volumes, indifference and uniformity in color and graphic solutions. All this created a melancholy, intensely autumnal mood of unhappy sleep in the ward. In addition to the above, the very language of the painting and the complete absence of anything alive in the image created the impression of a world frozen forever. The client, realizing this, asked the artists to add new elements to the mural painting without rewriting it entirely. And then this dead space of branches and trunks was "populated" by a multitude of multicolored flying, sitting, singing and whistling birds - it turned out to be a real Garden of Eden.
The hospital has its own logic and structure subordinate to it - in order to "humanize" such a space, to make it comfortable for a child, many nuances must be taken into account. We will tell you how foreign designers and architects cope with this task using the example of three projects implemented in the UK.
British designer Morag Myerskow is well known for her love of bright colors- whatever she undertakes, it turns out lively and emotionally. The design project of the children's hospital in Sheffield was no exception, only here we had to work especially carefully with flowers: firstly, the space should not annoy children with autism, and secondly, it should be comfortable not only for kids, but also for older children age. The main task of the architect was to give the hospital wards more home view... Myerskow designed forty-six bedrooms, bathrooms and lounges for sharing. She did not cheat on herself: the space turned out to be multi-colored, but not bright - muted tones perform the same function as saturated ones, but at the same time they do not irritate the sensitive children's mind.
In addition, in a hospital environment, it is important that everything remains sterile, which means it is easy to wash and clean. Meyerskow solves this problem with a plastic laminate. The wooden panels in the chambers are also laminated and washed in the same way as the walls. Formica, a laminate manufacturing company, helped the designer to implement the idea. Their panels also perform one more important function- hide behind themselves medical equipment, wires and cables. This allows you to make the space more comfortable, suitable for a long stay in it for a child.
MORAGUE MAYERSCOE interior designer Although the wards are for children, I didn't want them to look childish. Instead, I tried to make them cozy and the kind that children would like. of different ages and stayed comfortable for visiting parents - I just wanted to make a room in which everyone would be happy. The hardest part was printing wood panels in pure, true colors on the laminate. Due to the nature of the production, it was not easy to do, and the process took us a year. In the end, everything worked out, and the wood heat was preserved.
The British architectural firm Keppie, when working on a project for a children's hospital in Glasgow, set itself the same task - to make the space comfortable for long-term stay of children and their parents. The campus, commissioned by the charity Ronald McDonald House, is designed to allow parents to live here with their children while they receive treatment. Bedrooms, lounges, kitchen and games room - everything, as conceived by the architects, should resemble a house. Keppie concentrated on building planning and construction. Two spacious courtyards on either side of the central building should remind children of a playground near the house, and the material chosen for construction is rough white brick- makes a hospital akin to a rural house. To achieve more resemblance to a private house, the architects used rectangular bay windows, multifaceted ledges with windows in the wall of the building.
The interior matches the facade: natural materials, muted tones and precise detailing - all this creates the image of a comfortable communal home.
DAVID ROSS Keppie Design Glasgow Representative The hospital has its own logic and function, our task was to preserve them, but get away from the unpleasant associations that usually cause buildings in the category of health care. The building has a simple and austere facade, but at the same time does not look like a hospital. We have connected the buildings with each other using spacious corridors with windows overlooking the courtyard. The courtyard also protects against the noise of buses rumbling down Govan Road and screaming ambulances. It is a great honor for us to work on a project for children who are going through such a difficult period in their lives. In this case, the design follows purely humanistic principles - it tries to make the hospital space as human as possible.
Designers at London-based Jason Bruges Studio have found an easier way to transform the hospital. For the Children's Hospice on Great Ormond Street, they implemented the Nature Trail interactive project, which should smooth out the unpleasant impressions of the child from visiting the operating room. On the wall in the corridor, the designers have placed a large digital panel depicting the inhabitants of the forest: hotels, hedgehogs, birds and frogs. The custom-made wallpaper integrates 72,000 LED elements, which light up in a different sequence, making the forest creatures appear on the wallpaper and as if run along the surface of the wall - in total, the designers came up with 70 images. All of them are located at different levels so that both young and older children can see it.
JASON BRUDGES creator of interactive architectural integrations, founder of Jason Bruges Studio The nature trail is the path that the little patient takes on his way to the operating room: in this way we wanted to distract him and calm him down. The walls turn into a canvas on which forest creatures come to life. They protrude through trees and foliage and follow the child. To create interactive animations, we used 70 LED panels with different animals and a total of 72,000 LEDs.
The offices and hallways, the sounds and smells of the hospital make this place terrifying for children. But the hospital shouldn't instill fear. The British art organization Vital Arts, responsible for introducing art to British hospitals, has brought together 15 artists to transform the interior of the Royal Children's Hospital in London into an amazing and colorful place.
Despite the fact that the hospital has to be cleaned up all the time, artists were still able to use vinyl, ceramics, wood, and even carpets to bring these hospital walls to life. Each artist has created his own unique style.
13 PHOTOS
1. Intensive care unit decorated by artist Thord Boontje. 
2. The artist's work includes animals and flowers on the walls. Only the doors and medical automatic doors remained intact. Large drawings have many details and each time you can find something new in them. 
3. Traumatology and Gastroenterology from Morag Myerscough. 
4. The artist tried to depict all the images that he kept in memory over the years and splashed them out in his work. Thus, elements of circus, art deco, Asian culture, Victorian architecture appeared on the walls and this is not a complete list. Initially, the artist transferred everything to paper in the form of sketches, and then to the walls. 
5. The goal was to make the wards enjoyable for young patients and their parents, warm and welcoming. 
6. Hematology from Donna Wilson. 
7. Donna's goal was to make the hospital different from regular hospitals. She wanted patients, parents and nurses to feel calm and relaxed, and that the wall designs were uplifting. 
8. The reaction from children and parents was amazing. 
9. Waiting room from Chris Houghton. 
10. Chris decided to draw animals, lions, fish, etc. in each room. 
11. Vinyl was used in the corridors to create life-size images of animals. 
12. Department of Pulmonology from Miller Goodman. 
13. Wood is traditional warm material which has been and is still used to create toys. And very often the tree brings back pleasant memories of childhood. The combination of bright vinyl colors and wooden characters is very popular with children.
