Ready, set, draw – Sidcup care home residents take part in worldwide art festival

Home news

Oct 20, 2020

Residents at a care home in Sidcup picked up their pencils and went back to the drawing board for The Big Draw Festival 2020.

Care UK’s Smyth Lodge, on Frognal Avenue, celebrated all things nature by creating works of art around this year’s theme, ‘a Climate of Change’.  

As part of their event, residents and team members created an autumn collage, with help from pupils at Farringtons Primary School. Pupils created half of the collage and then delivered it to Smyth Lodge for the residents to complete.

The seasonal collage was created using a mixture of sketches of autumn wildlife that the residents and pupils drew themselves, as well as leaves, acorns and flowers that were foraged from the school’s playground and the garden of the care home.

Launched in 2000 as part of the ‘Campaign for Drawing’, the month-long Big Draw Festival promotes drawing as a tool for learning, expression and invention, and has encouraged over four million people to get arty since its inception. ‘A Climate of Change’, this year’s theme, focuses on the relationship between people and their environment, and offers a great opportunity for older people to reminisce about their favourite nature spots, as well as trips in youngers years to the great outdoors, and how our focus looking after our planet has changed in recent years. 

Roda Williams, Home Manager at Smyth Lodge, said: “The Big Draw was a huge success, and we were delighted to be able to partner with Farringtons Primary School for this year’s celebrations.

“Although current circumstances mean we are unable to welcome our friends at Farrington Primary School into Smyth Lodge, we still wanted to connect with them in a safe way this year and do something positive, and The Big Draw offered the perfect chance for us to do just that.

“We’d like to thank Farrington Primary School for taking part, and we can’t wait to join forces again soon for some arty fun!”

After a successful participation in the Big Draw Festival last year, Care UK renewed its partnership in 2020, becoming the main health and social care partner and leading the way in changing perceptions of life in a care home by promoting activity-based care and encouraging other care homes to follow suit. Across the country, more than 70 homes have been getting arty and working with their local communities virtually to create works of art around the theme ‘A Climate of Change’.

Smyth Lodge has been designed to deliver the very best standards of care and to enable residents to live active and fulfilled lives. The home provides full-time residential dementia and nursing care, as well as respite care.

To find out more about Smyth Lodge, please call Customer Relations Manager, Francois Erwee, on 020 3918 2873 or email francois.erwee@careuk.com

To find out more about Care UK’s partnership with the Big Draw, and for more top tips on how you and your loved ones can get involved at home, visit careuk.com/care-homes/bigdraw

To find out more about the Big Draw festival, please go to thebigdraw.org