Patients in Ashern’s Lakeshore General Hospital now have cheery artwork to look at in their rooms thanks to students from Ashern’s Central School.

At the end of June, groups of middle years students painted large four-foot by eight-foot pieces of plywood with fun bright scenes for the rooms impacted by the construction of the new addition. The construction project is expanding the emergency department with additional treatment space and increasing the number of inpatient beds.

Ashern Lakeshore General Hospital Guild chair Shelley Bjornson heard during a planning meeting about the opportunity to provide some murals for the patient rooms and immediately thought of the middle years students at Ashern Central School where she substitute teaches. She talked to Grade 5/6 teacher Shannon Kosolowski and they were able to organize it as an end-of-year school project for the middle years students to do in groups of three or four.

“To kick off the project, we met with each group individually and told them about the project and the goal was to make something that would make someone feel happy. We discussed the importance of simplicity. They did a little research on hospital murals and, as soon as they had inspiration, they sketched rough design and went to the woodshop space and sketched it out and created final project,” Kosolowski said. “The educational assistant worked hard to support the students on this project too. The best part is that many live near the hospital or know family that do, so they were so proud and excited to tell their aunts, uncles, grandparents about what they did at school for the local hospital.”

Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority CEO Marion Ellis thanked everyone for their involvement.

“Thank you to Shelley and everyone at Ashern Central School for going out of their way to provide the patients in the hospital with warm, uplifting murals for their rooms while we undergo construction,” Ellis said. “We’ve heard from patients that the artwork is appreciated.”

The plywood murals were placed in the windows of existing patients’ rooms in Ashern’s Lakeshore General Hospital, where they are expected to remain during the duration of the construction project, that’s expected to be completed by fall 2024.

At the end of June, groups of middle years students including Lily DeFoort, Keara Buenafe and Danni Vanderveen painted large four-foot by eight-foot pieces of plywood with bright scenes for the rooms impacted by the construction of the new addition at Lakeshore General Hospital.