Firstly I’d like to say that as the activities coordinator on Juniper Ward I sometimes feel like I have the best job in the world. And rightly so. The staff and service users I work with make it a nice place despite the challenges of working on and acute mental health ward. It wouldn’t be the same without them.

Our activities are quite varied. The activity room has table football, art facilities such as paints, charcoal for drawing, chalk pastels, oil pastels – we have art classes where people can learn how to paint or just paint what they want. We have been using modelling clay and talent with that has happily erupted. It’s great that when people come to art groups they are able to express themselves however they are feeling, no need to hold back, if they want to express darkness or sadness – happiness or joy, it’s all good, and we are creating quite an art gallery on the activity room wall. We often have gifted artists but the only thing required to paint or draw well is the desire to do it. The Ministry of Defence wing are often very good. The British army used to advertise on TV ‘Army – be the best.’ And they bring that attitude to art groups. When you want to do well at something your mind focusses and you persevere. If you feel encouraged by progress, you smile and want to do more.

We have many discussion groups. I am an amateur physicist and scientist and since I paid attention at school, when I’m writing up the activities board for the week I try and be creative and offer groups with an educational lean. Which is fine, we always have very smart people on the ward and the groups on say, Geography are a group effort, and as we move through the gears we learn from each other. That’s not to say we always stick to the subject, one minute could be about tectonic plates then soon were talking about the ethics of philosophy. And sometimes we veer off completely and talk about politics, but as long as we are there talking with each other it’s beneficial. We once got talking, and as the adrenaline flowed, we decided to discuss the problem of bringing world peace. We recently had two fascinating groups about the ethics of science discussing whether it is appropriate to continue scientific endeavours beyond the proposed mandates – things like should humans really be sending people to the moon for no good reason when people are still in poverty on Earth.

We have a beautiful sensory garden. One day me and the guys were doing a meditation session there. It was nice and then as we started talking afterwards, we started doing some bantering. We started telling tall tales. It was fun. Then a member of staff came to join us, and we kind of shared a look that said, lets see if we can see what escapades and stories we can get past her. As she sat down, she smiled and we began. We told her that the slate used for rooves is grown in the ground in Wales, but only in the right soil. Also, because of new regulations, cement is no longer used for bricklaying, superglue is the go to. On construction sites you can see millions of those little plastic bottles in big piles as they are used. And, one of the guys added, because of a case in law five years ago of wolf whistling from construction workers at a pretty lady who sued, it was decided that silence must be observed henceforth on construction sites, which is why buildings are taking less time to be built, as the workers are concentrating more on their work.

We have a pool table too. It has become the central hub where people gravitate to like planets around the sun. It’s an easy thing, no forward planning necessary one can just turn up and play with the option of placing the table tennis topper on and playing that instead. We put up the Bluetooth speaker and put on some tunes, we have tournaments and give away prizes. Sometimes the sound of fun and laughter echoes around the ward from the table. We also have giant Jenga which is very underrated. It’s a great one because we do forfeits for the loser, only small ones though. I lost last week and the guys made me a two foot tall hat from card and bright tissue paper. I had to duck through doorways and looked rather silly. I had to take it off after half a day because it was denting my confidence, really, it impaired my ability to do my job well.    

We have poetry groups, with a simple formula. We come up with a word as a group then we write a sentence that rhymes with it. Do that four times, and hey presto a poem. They often sound like John Cooper Clarke himself was at the pen, real poetry even if they do or don’t make sense. For international men’s day recently, we had a competition to see who could write the manliest poem. The entries were impressive, my favourite was the winner of second place, someone submitted a blank piece of paper, saying that in his opinion, men don’t write poems. I disagreed, but it was very poetic.

The best thing about having an activities coordinator is simply the fact that every day I have the opportunity to try and bring people together, and encourage patients to bond as much as possible.