Horndean care home teams up with worldwide art festival to bring therapeutic benefits of drawing to residents

Care UK’s Pear Tree Court has partnered with pioneering charity The Big Draw for a third successful year.

The charity promotes the therapeutic benefits of drawing for expression and positive wellbeing.

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 creative since ‘Make the Change’, this year’s theme, focuses on the relationship between people and their living environments.

This offers a great opportunity for older people to reminisce about their favourite nature spots, think about how the environment has changed, and consider what action can be taken to help safeguard the natural world considering the climate crisis.

Niki Richards, home manager at Pear Tree Court, said: ‘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.’

Pear Tree Court provides full-time residential, nursing and dementia care, as well as short-term respite care.

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Niki added: ‘We regularly encourage residents to take part in therapeutic and artistic activities which promote positive wellbeing.

After a participating 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.

They promote activity-based care and are encouraging other care homes to follow suit.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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