Ella
Ella worked as a technical instructor at Dykebar, a psychiatic hospital in Paisley, for almost 30 years. She recounts what it was like to treat patients using art and creative therapies. Ella shares her own experience of how attitudes towards occupational therapy in hospital changed over time.
Name: Ella Barclay
Years: 1970s-2000s
Ella worked as a technical instructor at Dykebar, a psychiatic hospital in Paisley, for almost 30 years.
She recounts what it was like to treat patients using art and creative therapies. Ella shares her own experience of how attitudes towards occupational therapy in hospital changed over time.
Excerpts:
“We were a bit of a joke in the ward, more or less ignored by staff and patients. You had to work really hard.”
“During a Burns Supper, the piper was piping in the haggis and he came in the side door … and his pipe got caught, you know, in the cords and him and the pipes went backwards and spilled to the floor and his kilt was up over his head”.