Art and making it ourselves is part of what it means to be human. We have been doing it since prehistoric times for mysterious, sacred, and socially complex reasons. What we know for sure is that making art can benefit both our mental and physical wellbeing in a huge number of ways – and that we don’t even have to be good at it to reap the rewards. Here are just five of the ways making art can be good for us.
Arts and Crafts For The Elderly
Art can help our care home residents recovery if they are unwell and it can help us to stay healthier and happier for longer. Making art contributes to leading an expressive, fulfilling, and creative life.
Creativity helps to stimulate our minds and keep our brains active. It can help to boost our concentration, reminisce about our past and retain our memories.
Making art relieves stress and anxiety. It provides new sensory experiences and focuses our attention away from our daily worries.
Making art can boost our self-esteem and sense of accomplishment. It allows us to explore new things in a safe space and teaches us that it is okay to make mistakes along the way.
Art brings us together. When being creative with others we feel less isolated and more connected as a community. Art helps us to communicate things that are sometimes too difficult to put into words.
Art Therapy
As the number of people living in care homes rises, the need for participatory arts activities becomes ever more important to ensure that residents stay healthy, happy and connected.
The evidence supports the need for arts in care but we need to make it happen. now here’s a little info from Annie.
Since June 2018 I have been exclusively providing Art for Well-being and Inter-generational Art sessions at Ivonbrook and Darley Hall care homes. Engaging in the arts is well known to alleviate anxiety, depression and stress whilst also creating a community activity helping to combat loneliness.
For myself, it is immensely satisfying to see residents, achieve an outcome that exceeds their initial expectations. To have a small impact on their quality of life within the care home setting, and create new treasured outcomes for their families to enjoy both now and in the future never fails to make me happy.
Below you will find an extensive selection of just some of the activities I run in Ivonbrook and Darley Hall Care Homes.
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- Painting Pebbles
- Tissue paper mâché and air-dried clay sculpting
- String Art and acrylics on canvas
- Painting Pots and Planting bulbs
- Felting
- Making Pom Poms for sensory experience
- Decoupage and making paper flowers
- Tree of Life collage
- The Big Picture Collage
- Making Christmas decorations
- Intergenerational Mexican wool Art
- intergenerational contour line drawing
- Intergenerational my favourite memory drawing
- Card Modelling
- Intergenerational bookmarks
- Gondoliers and Masks
- Egg Carton Flowers
- VE Day Celebrations
- Air Dried Clay Models
- Painting butterfly boxes
- Learning about watercolours
- Painting Pumpkins
- Learning about Pastels
- Still Life Drawing
- Watercolour and Leaf painting and many other activities.
Learn More
Learn more about the kinds of activities that we provide for our residents here at Ivonbrook and Darley Hall by contacting us.
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