An exhibition spotlighting CUH Arts' partnership with Britten Sinfonia.
27 Jun - October 2025
Addenbrooke's Gallery
When you think about the sounds of a hospital, do you imagine beeps, hums, coughs, chatter, machines, sighs? Through our live music programme, CUH Sounds, world-class musicians add instruments and song to this list.
From waiting rooms and wards to gardens and cafés, CUH Sounds shares the joy of live music with patients, staff and visitors. Working in partnership with Britten Sinfonia, a world-renowned chamber orchestra based in Cambridge, and national charity Music in Hospitals & Care (opens in a new tab), CUH Arts ensures that musicians are regular visitors to Addenbrooke’s. Evidence tells us that live music in healthcare settings can help people feel more relaxed, motivated or eased; it can help reduce stress, frustration and isolation. These are key components to health and healing, and music is central to how CUH Arts aims to improve the patient experience. CUH Sounds engaged over 7,500 people over 25 days of music in 2024 alone.
Britten Sinfonia is a long-term partner of CUH Arts and their classically trained musicians visit CUH regularly. As well as performing across the hospital, we also extend this work to explore how we can make music with our hospital community. In annual residencies with different clinical teams, our partnership has opened access to music for some of the most unwell patients in our care, created new compositions, delivered person-centered improvisations and devised bespoke repertoire.
This exhibition highlights the potential of engaging with music at CUH. It also features an installation called Holistic Notations by artist Keith Hopewell inspired by visual scores. Created with artwork produced by patients, visitors and staff over a month of music and art workshops, the display is a visual representation of the possibilities that music, art and improvisation can unleash.
Keith Hopewell
Keith was born in York 1972 and studied Fine Art & Visual Culture at Winchester School of Art. He now lives and works in Suffolk.
His practice explores the relationship between sound and non-representational painting, using unorthodox and contemporary mediums. His work is about creating a pure language for the senses. Keith has a long professional history of working with a broad range of media in public and private spaces, as well as a former career in music production.
Alongside and intertwined with his art practice, Keith has also worked extensively on community projects for over 30 years, facilitating workshops and events that explore all forms of artistic expression, graphic design as well as music-making and studio production. Keith has worked in schools, colleges, universities, youth services and independent creative hubs, and has also worked in one-to-one alternative provision building confidence and engagement in excluded young people. This project is his first in a hospital.