The cape of home, health and hope comes from conversations across a century, four generations of one Irish family, all nurses, comparing their lives and loves and hoping to create another three generations of nurses working beyond 2100.

The work is built upon the seven-generation principle. It recognises that present actions are shaped by the past and dictate future outcomes. This philosophical approach aims for sustainability and intergenerational wellbeing, and extends our sense of responsibility beyond immediate family, current nursing roles, and national health plans. It places us within a continuous story, bringing a long-term view in a world focussed on short term goals

The work is underpinned by arts in health evidence and radical nursing imagination thinking. It brings together how heritage (it all guises) helps health, how the arts can highlight invisible female labour, and how the arts can also build community, create belonging, and foster emancipation and joy across generations of nursing. . The education opportunities use the arts to imagine the next three generations of nurses and what nursing will be like in 2100. 

The cape is co-created using the family photograph album, embroidered words from memories of stories told over time, and symbols and images that bring Ireland, Derby, and nursing across a century and across the world into one scene.

A story of 100 years of health. A family of women nurses without blue plaque or pages on Wikipedia. Imagine losing your sister to TB, taking on her children then leaving Ireland and nursing in the TB isolation hospital in Derby. Imagine needing your father’s written permission to leave Ireland, then retraining because Irish qualifications did not count, and then getting the boat to Newfoundland. Imagine being a nurse in Hong Kong in the 1960’s, with an Aboriginal Community in the outback of Australia in the 1980’s, on the border of Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo in 2020’s.  The nursing women of this family travel the world and then come back to Derby.

The work in Derby spans generations too, and in hospitals no longer there. Ita, May, Marie, Anne, Marion, Emily, Nellie all the same family line, and Maggie and Nancy not Lynches but our extended family. We worked at the Derwent Hospital and the Nightingale in the 1960s and 70s, in the community, at Ronnie McKeith and the Royal 1980s and 90s, and this century graduated from Nottingham’s MSc Nursing programme and were one of Derby’s first Nurse Associates.

The cape is 3 dimensional, the size of a human female adult. The accompanying illustrative interpretations of the cape are 2 dimensional, 4ft by 4ft. These are designed to be shown in a corridor so people can closely at the faces and places and consider their own story too.

Our cape, as it is our story, brings together the aspects of nursing most precious to patients but least seen in nursing policy. It shows how social justice, social cohesion and social value are created through nursing, and through the arts.

The work first featured in the exhibition Nurses: Being Seen. Being Heard. Being at the Clore Learning Centre, Kensington Palace in May 2026. This was both an immersive art exhibition and education event created by Art of Nursing CIC with the aim to help people stay human in non human systems, and use the arts to do this.

The event was held in partnership with Foundation of Nursing Studies, The National Centre for Creative Health NCCH) Special Interest Group (SIG), Nurses and Creative Health, and the National Arts in Hospital Network (NAHN), and with support from the Burdett Trust for Nursing.

The exhibition featured 10 installations about nurses and nursing, each using the arts to show the invisible skills, and invisible stories of nurses. to help people stay human in non-human systems. The Cape was a central exhibit and was word by many nurses during the event.

This cape of home, health hope is our part of the art of nursing. It helps us consider where we came from, where we are going, and how personal dignity, professional opportunity and human centred care will evolve up to the year 2100.