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

Residents at a care home in Sidcup 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 Smyth Lodge, on Frognal Avenue, 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. 

 

Residents were encouraged to discuss their favourite artists and the paintings which made them famous. After much discussion about sunflowers and the infamous ‘starry night’ piece, the residents decided to use Van Gogh’s work to inspire their artwork and drawing style. Residents adopted Gogh’s style to create a ‘starry night’ teapot and a group collaborative piece on a giant canvas.  

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. 

Tracey Cheeseman, Home Manager at Smyth Lodge, said: “The Big Draw Festival is a fantastic initiative to get creative, and we know residents have been looking forward to the event.  

“Creative activities play a big part of life here at Smyth Lodge, and we actively encourage residents to continue lifelong arty hobbies and try new expressive pastimes through imaginative and creative activities planned by our lifestyle team. Drawing has a variety of benefits for older people, especially those living with dementia, as it provides an alternative way to communicate and express emotions, and an opportunity to relive happy memories.

“It was a fantastic drawing session, and everyone left with a smile on their face – we’re all looking forward to getting our pencils out again very soon!”

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’. 

Smyth Lodge has been designed to deliver the very best standards of care and to enable residents to live active and fulfilled lives. The state-of-the-art care home, which opened in 2019, provides full-time residential, nursing and specialist dementia care, and features a cinema, hair salon and activities room.

For more information about Smyth Lodge, please call Customer Relations Manager, Francois Erwee, on 0333 3053 474 or email francois.erwee@careuk.com.

For more general information about Smyth Lodge, please visit careuk.com/smyth-lodge.

Open to new residents

2 Frognal Avenue, Sidcup, Kent, DA14 6LF

Smyth Lodge

CQC Rating: Good
  • Residential care
  • Dementia care
  • Nursing care
  • Nursing dementia care
  • Respite care
  • End of life care
  • Day club