Man and woman sitting at a table looking at origami elephants

About: Willowbrook Creative Club

Posted

Thursday 23 March 2023

This year, we are pleased to be expanding our Elders’ Programme to include creative activity in Willowbrook, a Canley Retirement Village.

Willowbrook Creative Club delivers artist led creative sessions on Wednesday afternoons that are designed to:

Improve residents’ wellbeing
Engage them with a regular accessible creative activity
Challenge them to embrace and explore new or existing artistic skills.

Working with local artist Carrie Backhouse, the residents are exploring printmaking, sculpture and painting courses.

Carrie is taking inspiration from techniques used in the artworks exhibited in the Mead Gallery at Warwick Arts Centre.

Throughout the programme the participants are encouraged to exhibit their artworks in Willowbrook’s garden and communal areas of the building, for all residents and visitors to enjoy.

About Carrie Backhouse

Carrie’s background is in engaging older people with art as therapy and for positive mental wellbeing.

As an artist and community arts facilitator, she has over 20 years’ experience of running engaging arts programmes.

She is currently working with a variety of local community groups alongside Willowbrook Creative Club, including Men's Space (mental health group), Women's Evening Fellowship, and Knitting Needles.

Carrie’s passion is for working inter-generationally, particularly working with families visiting care homes.

Woman in purple velvet jacket holding up wire art of flowers

Hear from Carrie:

Working with Willowbrook over the last 9 months has given me the opportunity to explore different themes and mediums with the residents, linking in with the exhibitions at WAC.

I’ve been impressed at how the participants have grown in confidence over the time and become more expressive in their work.

Before Christmas, we explored the natural world, using leaves and foliage to create gel prints and screen prints that were transferred onto textiles and products.

The spring sessions have been exploring shape and form in sculpture and we have used clay, wire, paper, found objects and photography to create sculptures and installations.

Participants have said that they 'like exploring different artists work and reading about them in the sessions', and particularly enjoy 'having a takeaway sheet so we can learn more in our own time.'

These sculpture sessions in particular have helped residents’ journey from art activities that are outcome based into experimental abstract art.

My personal favourite moments were working with the group to create patterns with leaves in water whilst photographing the movement and creating installations out of found objects.

Working with elders’ who have no background in the arts is a real pleasure, as you see them begin to engage with being playful, which too often gets lost in adulthood.

One of the residents is an artist but has enjoyed using mediums which are new.

He relishes the sessions and will often return each week having tweaked the sculpture he made the week before or having researched the artists referenced.

It’s great to see his enthusiasm and he is a great advocate for the arts with the other residents.

This participant commented that "it’s great to have a refresher of things I did years ago. I like to add to the pieces at home and bring it back to show the group to see what they think."