Etching to go! Horndean care home residents take part in worldwide art festival

Residents at a care home in Horndean picked up their pencils and went back to the drawing board for The Big Draw Festival 2021.

Residents and team members at Care UK’s Pear Tree Court, on Portsmouth Road, have partnered with pioneering charity, The Big Draw, for a third successful year to promote the therapeutic benefits of drawing for expression and promoting positive wellbeing. 

 

As part of their event, residents and team members created a nature inspired collage. The residents worked on the project for two weeks, with everyone contributing ideas for what should be included, from hedgehogs and butterflies, to different vegetables, bumble bees, dragonflies and picnic baskets. Once the key elements were decided on, residents set to work drawing and painting all things nature, with everything displayed on one large butterfly. 

Launched in 2000 as part of the ‘Campaign for Drawing’, the month-long Big Draw Festival promotes drawing as a tool for learning, and invention, and has encouraged over four million people to get arty since its inception. ‘Make the Change’, this year’s theme, focuses on the relationship between people and their living environments, and offers a great opportunity for older people to reminisce about their favourite nature spots, how the environment has changed, and look to the future at what action can be taken to help safeguard the natural world in light of the climate crisis. 

 

Niki Richards, Home Manager at Pear Tree Court, said: “We had a great time taking part in The Big Draw this year, and it was a wonderful opportunity to put our creativity to the test. Art can take many forms, from drawing to painting and singing. At Pear Tree Court we always like to think outside of the box to create imaginative activities that encourage new experiences for residents – so we decided to create a nature inspired collage which contains all the resident’s favourite aspects of nature.

“We regularly encourage residents to take part in therapeutic and artistic activities which promote positive wellbeing. The whole team look forward to learning more about the wonderful experiences the residents have enjoyed throughout their lives and creating imaginative activities that build on their talents.”

After a successful participation in the Big Draw Festival in the past two years, Care UK renewed its partnership in 2021 as the main health and social care partner and leading the way in changing perceptions of life in a care home by promoting activity-based care and encouraging other care homes to follow suit. Across the country, Care UK homes have been getting creative and working with their local communities virtually to create works of art around the theme ‘Make the Change’. 

Pear Tree Court is a state-of-the-art care home which provides full-time residential, nursing and dementia care, as well as short-term respite care.   Designed to enable residents to live enjoyable and fulfilling lives, the care home has its very own cinema and hair salon, and there is plenty of space both indoors and out, for relaxation and recreation. 

To find out more about Pear Tree Court, please call Customer Relations Manager, Kate Slade, on 02392 986773 or email Kate.Slade@careuk.com.

For more general information, please visit careuk.com/pear-tree-court.

To find out more about Care UK’s partnership with the Big Draw, and for more top tips on how you and your loved ones can get involved at home, visit careuk.com/the-big-draw.

To find out more about the Big Draw festival, please go to thebigdraw.org.