Arts help battle dementia at Parkgate care home

CARE home residents have been exploring their artistic side in a dementia-battling project run by city farm staff.

Broadacres Care Home in Parkgate hosted a series of workshops, with residents painting, drawing, moulding clay and creating felted soap bars.

The activities were organised by Alex Raimondi, dementia project officer at Sheffield’s Heeley City Farm.

The first session involved soap felting  creating wool sleeves for soap bars to help preserve the soap and make a gentle exfoliator  while the second focused on moulding clay pots.

Resident Doreen Vernon said after the pottery session: “I’ve never made anything like this before. It’ll look lovely in my window.”

Alex said creative, tactile and multi-sensory experiences like art-making helped to improve health and wellbeing, provided opportunities to explore creativity and learn new skills and promoted social interaction on verbal and non-verbal levels.

Heeley City Farm will also be running a Farming Comes to You session at the home, with goats, rabbits, guinea pigs and chickens due to visit this month.

Jo MacGregor, activities coordinator at Broadacres Care Home, said: “Residents have been thoroughly enjoying trying something different.

“We always look forward to the visits from Alex, for the arts and crafts workshops, and they’ve proved very popular with the residents.

“They’ve enjoyed being creative, while having a chat and a cuppa, and then seeing and using their finished creations.”