Hundreds of art pieces to be delivered to Kelowna ICU workers

What started as a trip to an Armstrong sunflower festival has quickly grown into an Okanagan-wide intuitive to brighten the days of Kelowna intensive care workers.

Michelle Droettboom said the sunflowers brought “joy” and “sunshine” to her life and said intensive care workers also need to experience some sunshine.

In the last three weeks, Droettboom started collecting cradleboard panels and asking local artists to personalize them with their ideas and positive messages for the healthcare workers, calling it the "Share the Sunshine" intuitive.

The goal was originally to create 150 pieces of art for all ICU workers but artists across the valley have rallied to show their support and roughly 350 blank pieces have been given out so far, she said.

“Every art (piece) will be personal and the message will be personal,” she said, adding there's no specific theme for the artists to follow.

Artists from across the Okanagan and Shuswap have driven to Kelowna to pick up the blank cradles. Due to the high number of responding artists, in the next month, the pieces which will be delivered to both ICU  and COVID-19 ward healthcare workers at Kelowna General Hospital.

“I think it has a mind of its own. I think it started on the Monday before the big protest and Kelowna wasn’t going to let that be the message to these workers in the COVID units," Droettboom said.

Roughly 1,000 people gathered outside of Kelowna’s hospital earlier at the start of this month to protest COVID-19 vaccine cards. The protest was widely condemned, especially by healthcare workers.

READ MORE: 'How dare you': Healthcare workers react to rally against COVID vaccine cards at Kelowna General

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