August 7, 2015, by Lindsay Brooke

Academics, technicians and students to abseil down Lincoln Cathedral

Nottingham academics will abseil Lincoln Cathedral tower tomorrow to raise money for a new hospital garden at Queen’s Medical Centre.T hey will be part of a ‘mass’ abseil by 45 volunteers who will be the first people to ever descend from the roof of Lincoln Cathedral for a charity.

The group of brave academics will drop 95 feet down the West Tower of Lincoln Cathedral. Their quest – to help raise £50,000 to create a garden haven for patients and staff at the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) department at the Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC) in Nottingham.

They will be raising money for the QMC and the City Hospital. As well as the new garden, money is being raised for a host of good causes including Clinical Haematology, Breast Institute, the Helipad Appeal and the Emergency Care Ward B3.

The new ENT department garden has been designed by Professor Lorraine Young, while combining work at the School of Medicine at The University of Nottingham with garden design degree studies at Nottingham Trent University.

Lorraine, who will be leading the team in their descent from the top of the tower, said: “Gardens and outdoor spaces have always been my antidote to a busy academic job. A lot of evidence supports the stress reducing and healing powers of garden spaces and the project ticked all the boxes for me- a patient benefit appealed to my many years in the School of Medicine.  Here was an opportunity to use my new garden design skills for something that I think is really worthwhile.”

Lorraine will be joining Mrs Katherine Behenna, the ENT Department lead speech therapist who instigated the garden project and five academics from The University of Nottingham Cancer and Stem Cells Department. They are: Professor Chris Denning, Senior Technicians Katarzyna Lis-Slimak and Ralph Hyde and PhD students Aleksandra Tchoryk and Karl Firth.

Katherine said: “I have been nurturing a dream for a very long time to create a beautiful healing garden for our patients – a welcoming, reflective and sensory garden for patients awaiting diagnosis and for in-patients during their recovery”.

 

Lorraine said: “Very few people get the chance to abseil down the towers at Lincoln’s beautiful Cathedral. It is daunting for all of our ‘ENT Garden Danglers’ team but not as daunting as for patients in a stressful hospital environment”.

Katarzyna said “My son had several treatments in the ENT hospital and a sensory play garden area would have helped him relax and be less scared”

The event is being run by Nottingham Hospitals Charity. For more information about the EENT Danglers fundraising please go to https://www.justgiving.com/teams/ENTDanglers

The first individuals will begin their descent at 11.45am. Staff from Nottingham Hospitals Charity and fundraisers taking part in the event will be available for interviews and photographs / filming throughout the day, until 3pm. The ENT Garden Danglers will be there from 1-2.30pm.

Press wishing to attend – please email samantha.gathercole@nuh.nhs.uk to confirm your attendance and include roughly what time you plan to arrive at the event, or call Samantha on 0115 9691169, ext 59429.

More information is available from Prof Lorraine Young on +44 (0)115 849 7673 or +44 (0)7815 568016 Lorraine.Young@nottingham.ac.uk

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