North East Care Homes Celebrate Creativity With Bold Festival
Residents at care homes across the North East have enjoyed a series of arts-led activities as part of BOLD Festival this autumn to celebrate the creativity and experiences of older people.
Hill Care homes across the region joined forces with ARC, Stockton Arts Centre, to take part in BOLD Festival.
Residents from Ingleby, Queens Meadow, The Beeches, Mandale House and The Gables care homes attended a variety of events, performances and workshops during the month-long festival.
These included a special day trip to watch the production of Home Sweet Home, a stage play about the joys and challenges of life in a care home, which was based on the true stories and experiences of over 200 people across the UK.
ARC also hosted activities at various Hill Care homes as part of the festivalwhich included a show by two BOLD performers at Mandale House on Monday 22nd September. The show was based on the performers own inspirations and experiences, and was created over three days with Director Ree Collins at ARC before being performed to the public.
Other events at the homes included two ‘Silver Singers Workshops’ that were held at Ingleby on Thursday 25th September and Mandale House on Thursday 2nd October.
During the workshops residents sang songs to a musical accompaniment – an event that they enjoyed so much that the sessions lasted for an hour and a half!
Mandale House also welcomed back ARC on Tuesday 30th September for an ‘Ukulele Workshop’, where the opportunity to play the Hawaiian instrument was a first-time experience for most of the residents.
ARC also hosted a ‘Creative Arts’ session at Ingleby on Thursday 2nd October, which was attended by friends, family and members of the local community.
Liz Jones, Customer Relations Officer at Hill Care, said: “BOLD is a wonderful festival which proved extremely popular and we were delighted to be involved. ARC have held a range of events in our homes that have inspired as well as entertained our residents.
“At Hill Care we put great importance on holding different activities at our homes and always try to involve the local community where we can. We were very pleased that through ARC and the BOLD festival we could connect with the community, partake in new and exciting events and organise a trip to the arts centre for Home Sweet Home.
“Because BOLD celebrates older people and their creativity our residents have been able to relate to and thoroughly enjoy every event that they have been involved in so we would like to thank ARC and look forward to working with them again next year.”
Katherine Anderson, Creative Programmes Manager at ARC, added: “We are delighted that we could come together with the wider Stockton community and Hill Care homes to bring our expertise, developed through our Silver programme, to BOLD Festival.
“Delivering opportunities for older people to get involved with the arts is crucial to ARC and the success of Home Sweet Home and the wider festival shows just how important it is to engage and develop our audiences and to show that creativity has no age.”
