creative Archives - Creative Minds

CM Artist Alison, based in Warwickshire has been delivering art sessions to The Ashton Care Home in Hinkley and Aldersgate Retirement Flats in Nuneaton for over two years.

Since delivering sessions there, Alison encouraged The Ashton residents Dot, aged 97 and Cedric who has MS, to get back into their creative practice. Staff and residents have been amazed at the beauty of the work that they are now producing.

Alison has also been blown away by the work of 96 year old Cecily, a resident at Aldersgate Retirement Flats. Cecily had a creative history and has been painting since the 1930s. She now produces stunning watercolour landscape paintings in Alison’s art sessions.

Alison and Janice, the Activity Coordinator at The Ashton decided it would be a lovely idea to organise a get-together with the residents from both settings. This would give them the opportunity to meet and share their passion for art while admiring each others work. So, on the 17^th October, Alison organised a mini exhibition of Dot and Cedric’s work at The Ashton. She brought Cecily over from Nuneaton to enjoy a spot of lunch with fellow artists whilst viewing their work.

“It was wonderful to listen to them share stories, and admire each others work. After lunch we visited Dot & Cedric’s bedrooms to enjoy some more of their artworks. It made for a lovely social occasion they shared ideas and techniques whilst we all chatted about our love for art!” – Alison.

Afterwards Dot said “I like meeting new people, especially people who share interests, so it was great to chat about our artwork.”

Cecily commented; “I thoroughly enjoyed the meet up. Dot and Cedric were so enthusiastic. I would be lovely to go and meet them again to discuss our latest paintings.”

Janice, the Activity Coordinator from The Ashton said: “After the meet up, the residents said how fabulous it was! It was a real clicking of minds and wonderful that Dot and Cedric got to meet others with the same interests and passions.”

The residents are all keen to meet up again, and have formed a lovely friendship, so Alison is looking to arrange another get together soon so that they can admire each other’s latest masterpieces.

Our CM Artist Grace is a trustee of Dominion Schools Africa – a charity that provides financial support to a Kenyan school and helps to assist the school in providing high-quality education. In November, she went out to Gachie, in Nairobi to visit the school. The school year runs from January – November, so she arrived just as they were preparing for their end of year graduation which celebrates the 6-7 year old’s moving up to the junior school.

Grace saw this as a perfect opportunity for the children to get creative in preparation for graduation day. There is very little creative work in their school curriculum, and the school didn’t have many artistic resources. Grace had taken over some paint brushes and the school had pots of powder paint. That morning, Grace went shopping with the school’s head teacher and purchased some sturdy material to paint on. They decided to make some wall hangings on the theme of the biblical creation story.

Children from the school dropped in and out throughout the day and absolutely loved getting involved! Many had never had the opportunity to paint on such a large scale before. They even made some of their own paint using local earth mixed with water. The teachers were absolutely blown away by their efforts and thrilled to see how enthusiastic the children were.

Grace wanted every child in the school to have a go at creating their own self-portrait to hang up on graduation day. They experimented with mixed media and used paint, crayons and collage to create their own personal portrait. All were thrilled with the results!

The school is generally very structured with little opportunity for creative expression. At the end of the session, Grace allowed the children to have free reign to explore ways of using the artistic materials, and create whatever they wanted to. They all went wild and loved the freedom of the activity, saying how much fun they were having.

The school had never displayed artwork on the walls before, but the teachers loved the difference it made to the building. The teachers were thrilled to see how happy the children were during the art session, and chatted to Grace to discuss ways in which art could be brought into other subjects such as history and geography.

The children were so proud of their work at the end of the day, and were delighted to see it hung up on display. Before she left, one little boy came to Grace and said he’d had the “happiest day ever”!

Tag: creative

Alison’s Creative Meet Up!