A year ago I started freelance work providing creative reminiscence sessions for older people in different settings. Mainly these sessions involved rag rug making, but things have evolved during the last twelve months, and since I now offer lots more creative activities, tailoring sessions to the interests and needs of specific groups, it seemed time to dust down the header and change the wording! Yes I still offer rag rug workshops and rag rug reminiscence sessions (more news on the workshop front coming soon) but also a lot more besides. Contact me if you would like details!
So, 'home is where the heart is' - an empty platitude? I don't think so. In the context of Care Homes, how can we expect a person to feel 'at home' in any sense, if we don't know something of what's in their heart? I see creative activity enable people who live in Care Homes to express what's in their hearts, to themselves and each other. 'Home' may be experienced as the sense of feeling at home with oneself. Or it can be experienced as a tight physical sense of loss, that eases a little when shared. Home may be cherished from the distance of time and space, and become a comforting place when someone else helps by listening it into being...and crossing its threshold when invited.
Once, while being driven along a busy road, I suddenly recognized a resident's former home through remembering her drawing of it. To be honest, it wasn't so much the likeness that helped me recognize it, as the feeling in her drawing; of the relationship between her house and the garden. Difficult to describe, but only she could have drawn it.
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