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.
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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.