ANTIBIOTIC-THEMED artwork brought together patients, visitors and scientists at the John Radcliffe Hospital yesterday in a one-day workshop.

People came together to create aluminium tags called "votives" each depicting a personal story of bacteria or antibiotics and hung them together.

The aim was to get people talking about their experiences and the issues faced with anti-biotic resistance.

Modernising Medical Microbiology artist in residence Anna Dumitriu said: "We held the workshop to create bacteria votives as a way of getting members of the public and scientists to sit down and make things together - whilst sharing stories about bacteria, infectious diseases and antibiotics resistance.

"It was really lovely and we had a lot of interesting stories from everyone, somebody spoke about how he had very bad sore throat at one stage which lead to him giving up smoking. It was a sort of thank you to bacteria and the antibiotics that helped his sore throat.

"We also discussed how drug resistance is emerging and the risks that might be coming around this."

The artwork created in the workshop will be put towards a greater display at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford being shown in November.

The display will be part of an exhibition put on by Ms Dumitriu to mark 75 years since the first use of penicillin in a human.