A pioneering project led by Northern Ballet in partnership with Leeds Hospitals Charity is bringing together meditative dance, music and Virtual Reality (VR) technology to see if this can help alleviate stress and isolation for young patients.

The pilot project, which also involves key partners including the University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett University, aims to explore how young people at Leeds Children’s Hospital can be positively impacted by using VR technology. Utilised by hospital Play Specialists, the experience will ‘transport’ patients out of the clinical setting into a sensory, 360-degree virtual environment to experience a dance piece inspired by and set in, the natural world.

It is hoped that the project will gain an understanding of how young people react to the virtual reality experience and aims to help bed-bound patients, or those in hospital for long periods of time, feel entertained and more connected to the world outside.

We know that dance can transport audiences to a different time and place, to experience stories and emotions that take them away from their everyday lives – but to be able to do this in a fully immersive way takes this to a whole new level. I hope the powerful combination of nature, beautiful movement from the dancer and the immersive soundscape will help children feel calmer and less isolated in hospital.

The five-minute-long immersive experience is choregraphed by Northern Ballet’s George Liang, who has danced with the company since 2018, and performed by Cameron Pugh, a dancer at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. It was filmed over the summer at the Otley Chevin Forest Park in Leeds by filmmaker and project director Mark Wilkinson. The finished work is set a score composed by the Leeds Conservatoire, which combines gentle music with elements of an outside soundscape.

The VR experience will be tested in a clinical setting this autumn with groups of children and young people aged between 8 and 16, led by the Play Team at Leeds Children’s Hospital, funded by Leeds Hospitals Charity. The project partners have devised a short feedback form to capture insights and feedback from patients. An analysis of the feedback will be summarised in a report which will be made publicly available in spring 2027.

The project has been developed with insight from the Leeds Young Research Owls - a group of young individuals dedicated to influencing all disciplines of child health research in Leeds – and academic input and expertise from Leeds Beckett University and The University of Leeds through the Child Health Outcomes Research at Leeds programme.

Its aims to contribute to a growing body of evidence on the effectiveness of VR in improving the paediatric hospital experience, lay the foundations for a larger scale research study, and support knowledge sharing across the healthcare sector, locally and nationally.