Untold Stories

The NHS is one of the largest employers in the world, with 1.4 million people working in a variety of roles.

And all of them have a story to tell — about what the NHS means to them, the highs and lows of working in a caring profession, their hilarious anecdotes, and the tales of tragedy.

Bringing those stories to life to help celebrate the 75th anniversary of the NHS is the aim of a new writing project that sees award winning poet Dr Kim Moore based as a writer-in-residence at Trafford General Hospital.

Untold Stories of the NHS, led by Manchester Met and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), aims to celebrate the contribution to care of current and former NHS workers, reflecting on their working lives within the organisation and telling their stories through creative writing.

Dr Moore, who recently won the Forward Prize for Poetry and is a lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Met, has been placed at Trafford General Hospital, the first NHS hospital opened in 1948 by then Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan.

Untold Stories of the NHS will be delivered in partnership with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), Lime Arts (MFT’s arts-for-health organisation), Health Education England, and Manchester UNESCO City of Literature.

Reflecting

Dr Moore explained how she has spoken to a wide range of NHS staff during her residency, listening to their accounts of their time working at Trafford General Hospital.

The fascinating stories have focussed on a wide range of topics, with many reflecting on their experiences of recent years and the immeasurable impact it’s had on them.

Dr Moore said: “I’ve spoken to people from a range of job roles – nurses, porters, domestics and people who work in catering. Most Tuesday afternoons, I’ll go into one of the wards and see if I can talk to some of the staff who are working up there.

“Many staff, when I’ve asked them, ‘What’s the thing that you remember the most about working in the NHS over however many years they’ve been there?’, quite often they will say when COVID happened. Obviously, I expected it to be important to them, but I didn’t expect it to cast such a long shadow in their minds.

“Some of the stories have been really upsetting. There have also been some lovely stories about simple acts of caring and the generosity and self sacrifice that a lot of the staff made during that time.”

Staff have also shared their inspirations for why they wanted to work in the NHS, with many citing an experience of caring for someone as their main driver.

“It’s interesting that so many of them had this early experience of being in a position where they had to care for somebody, or they wanted to care for someone. And then they’ve just carried on,” explained Dr Moore.

As well as listening to staff stories, Dr Moore has been running a series of creative writing workshops to help inspire staff to produce their own writing.

“Some staff I’ve spoken to, mainly ones that already have a background in writing, are writing their own stories. I’m working with those staff members in a mentoring and editing capacity. I’m also running a series of workshops so staff can have a go at creating their own work,” Dr Moore said.

Dr Moore will produce an original piece of creative work responding to her residency at Trafford General Hospital, which will be released during the week of the NHS’s 75th anniversary on 5 July 2023.

The project will culminate in an exhibition and a published anthology of creative writing produced by NHS staff and curated by Dr Moore.

The exhibition will begin with a launch event during the week of the anniversary at Manchester Met’s Manchester Poetry Library and will run until September 2023.

Testimony

Dr Moore explained how the anthology will use poetry to piece together these stories from people’s working lives in the NHS and share them with the world.

“A lot of the staff have been working in the NHS for 20 or 30 years, so the poems are going to be like fragments of those of those lives, but sewn together, and hopefully when they’re produced in the book and the exhibition, they’ll be a part of history, forming a piece of private and public testimony.”

Vascular Scientist Anna Jerram explained why she decided to take part in the project: “It instantly sparked my interest, having been quite keen on creative writing in my teenage years.

“Working with Kim has been great. She has been very supportive and helped me find the confidence to try my hand at writing again. I think the project is a great opportunity to mark the 75th birthday of the NHS and to showcase and celebrate our contributions as employees in such a fundamental establishment.”

Dr Moore added: “One of the things I’m really interested in is telling the stories of people, the untold stories. I guess the mark of whether I’ve achieved that or not is whether the staff are happy with what I’ve written,” she said.

“I wrote a poem in the voice of the porters. And I emailed it to one of them, and he showed it to the rest of the guys, and one of them came up to me in the canteen, shook my hand, and said, ‘You’ve got it right. That’s exactly how it is.’

“And for me, that’s better than any review because that person feels like their story has been honoured and their life is worthy of poetry and art.”