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

Residents at a care home in Orpington have been ‘looking the art’ throughout October as they picked up their pencils and went back to the drawing board for The Big Draw Festival 2021.

Care UK’s Foxbridge House, on Sevenoaks 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. 

Not letting the pandemic stop them from making new friends, residents and team members thought of a creative solution and asked local pupils from Beyond, a before and after school club at Warren Road Primary School, to help inspire their Big Draw artwork. 

Pupils, aged six to ten, drew their favourite things from nature, including wildlife and local beauty spots around Orprington. After picking their favourite three pieces, residents recreated the pupil’s artwork to mirror the three worthy winners, who will each receive a prize from the home. 

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 planet in light of the climate crisis. 

Stella Barnes, Home Manager at Foxbridge House, said: “The Big Draw Festival is a fantastic initiative to get Autumn ‘off to a flying art’, which residents have enjoyed and looked forward to for a third year running."

“Art and intergenerational activities are a huge part of life here at Foxbridge House, and even though we may have been unable to meet in person, it was fantastic to collaborate with Warren Road Primary School for our artwork – despite it being autumn, creativity is certainly in bloom in Orpington!"

“This year’s theme created a great topic of conversation, and it was interesting to hear residents’ favourite nature-related anecdotes and views on how things have changed since they themselves were at school. It was fantastic to see the residents discussing what small actions we can all do that will lead to big changes in the fight against climate change”. 

After a successful participation in the Big Draw Festival last year, 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’. 

Foxbridge House 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, nursing and dementia care, as well as short-term respite care.  
 
For more information about Foxbridge House, please call Customer Relations Manager, Dorothy Ayonmike, on 01689 769 229, or email dorothy.ayonmike@careuk.com.

For more general information on Foxbridge House, please visit careuk.com/foxbridge-house.

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/the-big-draw.

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