Silversprings win “Artist tree” competition

Home news

Nov 12, 2013

We have been announced as the winners of Care UK’s “Artist tree” competition. The Autumn competition, which stretched across all Care UK homes and day centres, asked us to reflect the resources that nature provides to support activities and get creative.

As the competition was themed on trees, we created “The Silversprings Family Artist Tree”. The residents, as well as members of the community, helped to create a tree from chicken wire and papier mâché for the base, and collected real twigs and branches to create the tree top. During arts and crafts sessions, salt dough and material leaves were made by the residents. Acorns and wood chips were also collected to decorate the tree.

As a group, the residents discussed their backgrounds and wrote down on a leaf template their own memorable events, facts and memories. These were then attached to the tree.

Kia, Customer Relationship Manager at Silversprings, said about the competition “It was lovely to see each resident relive a part of their life and the pleasure they got from discussing common themes with each other.”

To support the entry, residents made bird feeders and hung these in the garden so that as the weather turned, they could still enjoy looking outside and watching the wildlife. We even learnt about flower arranging, and created our own still life, creating lots of drawings and paintings.

The last part to our entry was our own family tree. We created a list of each resident in the home and put them in order of age. Residents name details were collected and put into age order, starting with the eldest at 102, and finishing with the youngest resident, aged 61. Each birthday and age was written and cut out on card and residents then took it in turns to stick it on to the family tree.

The residents thoroughly enjoyed all our nature and tree themed activities and we are so thrilled to have won the competition.