You’re invited to a very special birthday party – Saturday, 30thJune 1-3pm at Exeter Central Library, Castle Street (click here for map)
The National Health Service is 70 this year. To celebrate, the Wellcome Trust-funded Waiting Times team and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health are collaborating with colleagues at the Exeter Library and University of Warwick to organise a birthday party.
This will be no ordinary do, however. As part of our public engagement strategy, we will be organising a host of activities to mark the occasion, to explore the history and future of the NHS, and to collect memories and narratives of service use (and waiting) over the past 70 years. Stalls for the public will include:
- Card-making – create everything from birthday to “get well soon” cards
- Video reel – marking 70 years of the NHS on and through film
- A consultation room – diagnose the NHS, prescribe it treatment, and prognosticate on its future
- Message recording – leave a message for the NHS or record a memory for our archives
- A waiting room and buffet area – like a GP waiting room, only with birthday cake, crisps, squash and token carrot sticks.
- Creative-writing workshop – with the possibility of getting your story/poem published in Riptide new-writing journal
- Children’s story-time – a medicine-themed story read by Library staff.
It will be fun for all the family and finished in time for the football too!
If you are interested in volunteering, or hearing more about the event, then please email:
martin.moore@exeter.ac.uk and m.flexer@exeter.ac.uk
We are particularly keen to hear from anyone else who is turning or has turned 70 in 2018. We’d love to celebrate your birthday at the same time!
