Arts in care homes – part 1
10 Years of Creative Paths!
Have you heard about our arts, culture and learning in care?
Creative Paths have been using arts in care homes, to enhance resident’s quality of life for the past 10 years through their workshops, resources, training and learning! We are so excited that we will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary on July 31st that we wanted to share some of the creative highlights over the past 10 years with you all.
Our Creative and Cultural Learning
We have been very thankful for the support over the years from INSPIRE Learning who we have worked in partnership with to deliver discreet community learning to Nottinghamshire care home residents. Our first three watercolour courses at Braywood Nursing Home, Carlton Care Home and Bramcote House Nursing Home culminated in an exhibition at Arnold Library where residents enjoyed a private view, with bubbly and a buffet.
Since then our partnership with INSPIRE has seen us deliver our creative and reminiscence community learning to over 3000 Nottinghamshire residents living in or using care settings. Our creative course offer has ensured that Nottinghamshire care homes have had funded access to arts in care homes for the past 10 years.
Other highlights from our community learning programme have been working with Nottingham City Council, delivering intergenerational learning, our Digital Frontiers, Make to Give and Superhero Academy courses delivered learning to all ages in the Clifton and Bilborough wards of Nottingham.
Innovation has always been an integral part of our learning offer in care settings, we have always made the most of new technologies to make the creative experience engaging and fun. In 2023 we have introduced Virtual Reality headsets to our learning offer, courtesy of our Spanish partners OROI this new technology is now being piloted as part of our 22/23 learning offer in partnership with INSPIRE. Participants can travel the world virtually exploring OROI’s range of 360 degree video content. We see the future of VR being a key resource for future arts in care homes activities.
As well as innovative resources to bring our learning alive, we make use of local resources such as Access artefacts the museum service loan box service, this has given our learners the opportunity to handle museum and archive artefacts to stimulate recall and reminiscence.
We are very proud of the high quality learning we have delivered over the past 10 years it has provided us with a unique way of providing arts in care homes. We define learning as a ‘positive’ change, our learning has strong impact on the people who enroll onto our courses, it brings social interaction, fun, meaningful connections, sharing of knowledge, increased personhood and feelings of being valued, plus our learners gain insight, knowledge and new skills. It’s win, win!
If you have a care setting based in Nottinghamshire get in contact, as we are now taking bookings for our 23/24 reminiscence and arts in care home’s learning programme. Contact karyn@creativepaths.org.uk
Next month we will be reminiscing about all the great projects we have done over the past 10 years.
See you then!
Karyn
Programme Director
