I’m Still Me Exhibition at St James’s Hospital until 31st January 2025

National World - LocalTV

Patients who wear facial prostheses after treatment for head and neck cancer have had their portraits painted for a Leeds exhibition to illustrate the physical and psychological impact of living with a facial difference.

Transcript

00:00I'm Still Me is a arts and science collaborative public engagement project

00:06that's trying to share some of the research that we've been doing at the

00:09University of Leeds over the past few years and also share people's experiences who

00:13live with facial prosthetics. For me making a facial prosthesis really brings

00:18together the arts and science and in the UK maxillofacial prosthetists typically

00:24come from like a science and technology background but actually there's a huge

00:28artistic component in what they do too. I think the artists were all very

00:34honoured to be doing this and were also very aware of the sensitivity of what

00:41they were painting and the delicacy of painting people who had their faces

00:46altered in these ways.

00:58The emotion, the emotion that you've captured in there is just immense it's

01:03exactly what I wanted. I thought you can't, how do you paint an emotional

01:09event you know but it's it's there I can almost feel it happening.

01:18I think for me the texture of the of the prosthetic it's still quite hard

01:24silicone plastic and that's you know not very supple so facial expressions I

01:31feel I miss the facial expressions but that's not you know not to be said that

01:37that won't happen in the future and you know with further research you know

01:43anything is possible. I think the lasting impact that we would like to have

01:47achieved is to have built this culture of collaboration and engagement and to

01:52have connected all these different professionals, patients, artists together

01:56to really amplify the voices of those who need it most.

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