Reaching Out Drawing In

Introduction

The project Reaching Out, Drawing In incorporated two pilot projects which looked to test the impact of long-term engagement through the arts and in the environment for learning disabled adults and people living with dementia, including carers and family of the person with Dementia. 

The first pilot which looked to support individuals and their families living with Dementia offered personal art sessions in people’s homes alongside regular weekly 2-hour group art sessions at Centre Celf. The second pilot project focused on learning disabled adults offering regular blocks of six-week art courses, 2-hour each week over a two-year period at Centre Celf.  

The challenges

The particular challenge under consideration with the Dementia pilot was engaging people living with dementia in regular participative art sessions.  Often people did not remember past experiences of finding pleasure from the arts, or connecting to skills they once used, Carers not having the time to support someone to come. 

The challenges of running a pilot project for learning disabled adults mainly centred around specific needs of participants and their environment, including where they lived both physically and geographically.  A particular difficulty, especially for those living in supported accommodation, is the availability of staff to bring participants to workshops, especially those who live with a small number of service users.  

The organisation also faced their own challenges for the whole project due to staff changes.  Staff left due to other commitments, midway through, meaning new staff members needed appointing, existing staff had to take on new roles but with a lack of time or crossover to give proper handovers which meant contacts, information and continuity was lost.

Solutions

The Dementia pilot tried out two approaches to deal with some of the challenges they faced. 

One was on-going arts workshops in the Centre Celf building.  A programme of art workshops was devised, exploring many different art forms.  Most of these were six-week programmes. The workshops ranged from lino-cutting to water colours, printing, silk paining, postcards and memory quilting.  By providing regular workshops the intention was to build up a sense of familiarity with the building, the artists and the use of art materials. 

By including carers, the intention was to provide a relaxing space for people to enjoy together, where everyone was on equal terms, giving families an experience of enjoying something together regardless of the dementia, rather than the carer/s feeling they were having to support the person with dementia in the session.  

The second approach was to offer one-to-one art sessions directly to people in their own homes. This was for up to ten sessions each.  The project also looked to work with residential and nursing homes and the local hospital to ensure access for dementia sufferers’ resident in EMI units with the possibility of some workshops taking place in these settings.

The disabled learning adults pilot programme also found solutions to their challenges, Project staff worked hard to establish and plan a two-year programme of workshops.  Continuity and routine were key to enabling commitment, so establishing a two-year programme was key to the success of this pilot project.  It was also clear that email communication was not best suited for those living in supported homes.  Emails were read but not printed out and quickly forgotten.  This meant the information about workshops was not passed on to the learning-disabled adults themselves, those who booked activities or those on shift the day of the workshops.  Bright, easy read paper posters were produced for each series of workshops, these were printed out and given to workshop participants as flyers with A4 size posters sent to participants already connected to Celf o Gwmpas, postal addresses.  Initially, project staff would ring different participants and supported homes a couple of days before the workshops to remind them of the workshops and to see who was planning on attending.  As the sessions became more established this became less necessary.

Result

The benefit of the Dementia pilot project was that Celf were able to run weekly workshops for two years.  This enabled a small core group of people to attend weekly sessions, mainly made up with residents of local care homes but also a couple of people who initially lived at home.  The project was able to run 88 workshop sessions over a two-year period
The benefit of the disabled learning adults project was to be able to consistently run weekly workshops for up to 9 participants (and their carers) for a number of years.  The sessions became part of people’s regular routines.  The pilot was a great success, participants enjoyed working with the same artists, knowing what was happening from week to week and being able to plan for participation. As each series of workshops were usually 6 weeks long this allowed for the development of work and skills.  Attending with the same people each week enabled friendships to grow and most enjoyed the social aspect.