Flourishing: arts, wellbeing and older age What is the effect of engaging in participatory arts on the wellbeing and quality of life for healthy older people? I am a PhD student at the University of Derby, researching Art for Health in Older Age. My research interests include investigating ‘meaningful’ creative engagement; examining definitions of…
Category: Art
‘Many Old Hands Make Great Work’ Last week I took part in Creativity and Wellbeing Week curating an exhibition of pottery called ‘Many Old Hands Make Great Work’. It showcased the talents of my pottery students who I teach from 4 residential and care homes in London and Surrey; they are all aged between 60-105…
Sing Your Hearts Out For Valentine’s Day this year Flourishing Lives had the absolute pleasure of heading along to Stratford Circus for their ‘Sing Your Hearts Out’ sing-along. The first half of the sing-along was led by the Age Well Singers and the second half by Newham Super Choir. We started off with a…
Christmas Advertising Ah Christmas, a time for children, grandparents and cute animals. Or so the £5.6billion spent in the UK on advertising and marketing would have us believe. However, whilst children play a diverse range of characters over the course of the year in the world of advertising, it seems that older people undergo a…
Measuring Happiness Very often in this sector we are required to ‘measure people’s happiness,’ to quantify the change in them as a result of their engagement with our work. However, while we can feel the development through their changed tone of voice, or their smile or the shift towards more proactive communications, capturing this in…
Rotherhithe Shed As part of Southbank Centre’s Being a Man festival, the Royal Festival Hall played temporary host to a series of ‘Men’s Sheds’ from across London, offering free workshops and skill demonstrations accessible to all. The Men’s Shed movement started in Australia as a fun and engaging way to combat social isolation and…