National Portrait Gallery
In February 2016, Delancey became the first ever sponsor for the National Portrait Gallery’s Schools Programme. The first public portrait gallery in the world, the National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1856 and now has the largest collection of its type, housing some 200,000 portraits, from the 16th Century to the present day.
The Gallery’s Schools Programme was a vibrant and important part of the gallery’s learning offer, using its permanent Collection and temporary exhibitions as catalysts for activities which support the National Curriculum at primary and secondary schools across London. The three year programme worked across a range of subjects including history and citizenship as well as art and photography.
In 2017 Delancey extended its support of the Gallery and signed up to support the National Portrait Gallery’s Hospitals Programme which works with London’s four leading children’s hospitals – Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, Evelina London Children’s Hospital, The Royal London Hospital and Newham University Hospital - to deliver a creative arts project to thousands of children and their families. More recently in 2020, Delancey renewed this sponsorship for a further four years and agreed to expand its reach to cover west London, introducing the arts programme to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
The funding has enabled the Gallery to increase its commitment to providing access to the arts in London’s children’s hospitals. The only children’s hospital arts programme of its kind in the world, it provides an ongoing, high quality, bespoke educational creative arts project year-round at no cost to hospitals.
The Gallery’s programme includes around eighty creative workshops a year, working with photographers, writers and artists, and the scale and quality of the books ensure they can be used in many different clinical settings. The project enables young people and their families to access the Gallery’s Collection and helps support health, wellbeing and happiness through participating in the books’ activities and workshops.
In April 2019, we were delighted to launch a new activity book for all young people at our partner sites. Designed by award-winning illustrator Quinton Winter, the activity book explores 12 people in the Gallery’s Collection: Malala Yousafzai, Dorothy Hodgkin, Zaha Hadid, Harold Moody, the Brontë Sisters, Octavia Hill, Noor Khan, David Weir, William Blake, Ben Whishaw, Barabara Hepworth and Nick Park. All Rebels, Believers and Dreamers, the book enables young people to discover and respond creatively to a wide range of inspiring people past and present who have demonstrated resilience to achieve their dreams. It shares their inspirational stories and includes games, art and craft activities. Examples include a code-cracking task related to Noor Khan’s life as a secret agent and a board game inspired by Paralympian David Weir’s training regime in Richmond Park.
The challenges that faced our partner hospitals in 2020 meant physical workshops were not possible. However, the team quickly adapted to the virtual world and created an array of online resources for the children’s use, as well as live-streamed workshops. Most recently, we introduced activities inspired by three healthcare heroes from our Collection: Dame Sally Davies, Sir Paul Nurse and Mary Seacole. An example of the online resrouces produced by this programme can be found here:
https://www.npg.org.uk/learning/digital/healthcare-heroes/mary-seacole
Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, comments:
“I am delighted that Delancey will ensure the continued support of these exciting projects that bring portraits from the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection directly to London’s schools and children’s hospitals and will inspire their own creative responses to them.”