Stroke survivors tell how they are regaining confidence thanks to an innovative council-run art project

STUART Hepburn knew he was on the road to recovery when friends and family lined up to feel him squeeze their fingers.

Until that moment, he had lain in a hospital bed for months with only the ability to blink – collapsing at home from a sudden stroke had changed his life forever.

"After the squeeze, the visitor of the day would feign surprise at the firmness of my grip," he jokes. "I knew that it was still pretty weak."

Today the 57-year-old, physically, is not the active man he once was.

Confined to a wheelchair, with limited mobility and unable to speak, the former Colinton businessman communicates through e-mail, or by using an electronic voice keypad.

Mentally, however, he is as sharp as a tack – and he is on a mission, determined to prove there is life beyond a stroke.

At the Firrhill Centre, a council-run facility for people living with a disability, he has done just that.

Looking up at a wall of artwork he has created through an art project there – paintings and drawings all done with his right hand where mobility is best – he says art therapy has allowed an outlet for his thoughts. However, it has done more than that – it has restored his confidence.

For the next month, his work will be displayed at the Filmhouse, along with creations by other users of the Colinton centre – all people whose lives have been affected by a stroke.

The centre has been a lifeline for them and Stuart, allowing them the freedom to again contribute to society. The exhibition marks months of hard work, the result of a pilot project for 100 people which will now expand owing to its success.

"The one activity I got heavily involved in was art therapy," Stuart explains. "I suppose it gave me an outlet to express some of the more complex ideas running through my head.

"It would be a lie to say anything is a great pleasure when it's being experienced through the filter of a severely disabled body, but Firrhill has been one of the few places where there has been deep understanding of the issues involved and practical guidance to make conditions a bit more tolerable.

"In particular, the art class has provided me with an outlet for some nebulous ideas that would otherwise have gone unexpressed."

Stuart lived a regular life before his stroke. As a successful business consultant he was just 52 when, in March 2005, he noticed his legs had stopped working when he was exercising.

In his home, he dragged himself into the hall and made a 999 call for help.

"It wasn't particularly dramatic and, in my case at least, there was no discomfort involved," he says. "I didn't even know what a stroke was at the time. Although my speech was a little slurred, it was still in working order."

By the time the ambulance was racing down the city bypass to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary he was vomiting badly.

For two years he was confined to hospital, describing himself as "a radio set without a tuning button".

Eventually though, with the expert help of physiotherapists, movement returned, beginning in his fingers and eventually in his right arm.

"Everything they touched seemed to add quality," he says.

Joining him at the Firrhill Centre, Andrew Bisset, a 63-year-old from Polwarth, understands Stuart's experience perfectly – he too has had a stroke.

He was a keen model craftsman and gardener before his attack last year, and until he arrived at Firrhill, he thought any hope of even carrying out simple tasks like washing the dishes were gone.

Thanks to the council-led art scheme, he has been able to abandon that mindset and will also take part in the exhibition at the Filmhouse, with a face sculpture going on display.

"I was pretty sceptical at first because I didn't think I'd be able to do everyday things again, let alone this," he smiles. "But I went along and now I can't speak highly enough of the place.

"I sat down with the clay and some guidance and this is the result.

"It's not just the physical skills staff help you learn, it's the company and the people here, I've never seen anything in health work as well as this before."

Stuart agrees. He had become tired of the hospital setting before he arrived at the Firrhill Centre, fed up operating in the limitations of answering only yes or no to questions when he knew "that was way below my level of competence".

"Initially, when I came home, I sat in the garden just letting the past two years blow out of my hair," he explains. "Back in the land of the living it was quite a shock to discover how much my status had changed. Before there was the comfort from knowing that I was part of the engine of the economy. In fact there was quite a satisfaction from the knowledge that I was helping to make that engine purr more every day.

"Contrast that then with the realisation that from now on I was likely to be a burden on the state."

Now, with physiotherapy and time at the Firrhill Centre, his mindset has changed – he believes in the positive future ahead of him.

"I am now able to face whatever life throws at me. And most importantly of all, the future does not seem like the bleak place it once had."