Etching to go! Aberdeen care home residents take part in worldwide art festival

Residents at a care home in Aberdeen picked up their pencils and went back to the drawing board for The Big Draw Festival 2021. 

Residents and team members at Care UK’s Tor Na Dee, on North Deeside Road, have partnered with pioneering charity, The Big Draw, for a third successful year to promote the therapeutic benefits of drawing for expression and promoting positive wellbeing. 

 

As part of their event, residents and team members took part in an art competition with the children at Kingswells Primary School, as well as hosting an animal life drawing session with a special four-legged friend – Sherbert the pony. 

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 arty since its inception. ‘Make the Change’, this year’s theme, focuses on the relationship between people and their living environments, and offers a great opportunity for older people to reminisce about their favourite nature spots, how the environment has changed, and look to the future at what action can be taken to help safeguard the natural world in light of the climate crisis. 

Maureen Barrett, Home Manager at Tor Na Dee, said: “Our Big Draw event was a hit and residents loved getting creative."

“Drawing is great for everyone, especially for older people, including those living with dementia. On top of physical benefits, from increased motor skills to improved coordination, creative activities, such as drawing, can truly boost cognitive function and even reduce the rate of development for a range of memory conditions."

After a successful participation 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 by promoting activity-based care and encouraging other care homes to follow suit. Across the country, Care UK homes have been getting creative and working with their local communities virtually to create works of art around the theme ‘Make the Change’. 

Tor Na Dee provides full-time residential, nursing and dementia care, as well as short-term respite care. Designed to enable residents to live enjoyable and fulfilling lives, the care home has its very own cinema room and hairdressers, and there is plenty of space both indoors and out for relaxation and recreation.

For more information on Tor Na Dee, please call Home Manager, Maureen Barrett on 0122 404 2731, or email Maureen.barrett@careuk.com.

For more general information, please go to careuk.com/Tor-Na-Dee.

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/cthe-big-draw.

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