Our work
Read about the ways we work, and do get in touch for a chat if you would like to explore working with us.
Open Arms in Care Homes
We deliver person-centred creative activities for groups and individuals, with family members welcome to join in the fun.
This can also include individual sessions for residents who are no longer able to leave their rooms or are confined to their beds in later stage dementia.
We would love to get to know you more over a longer period of time, and can organise bespoke residencies - flexible to the needs of the home.
We continue to adapt how we work, and can offer pop-up outdoor creative interventions in gardens, as well as individual and group training sessions for carers.
We realise budgets are tight, so are happy to work with you on joint funding applications, and advise on suitable artists and ideas for setting up creative projects.
Open Arms in Sheltered Housing
We partner with local housing schemes to deliver sessions in communal areas - indoors and out - and also in people’s homes, flats and on their doorsteps.
For example, on the right, in partnership with Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum we’re having fun with sheltered housing residents in Whaddon. Two of us ‘roamed’ with the Activity Coordinator, knocking on people’s doors. We’d arrive equipped with hot tea and bone china cups so that creative sessions could happen inside people’s flats. Here we used Victorian kitchen utensils as a starting point for poetry-making and dance…!
And below we’re at Pope’s Close, working in partnership with Cheltenham Borough Homes.
Intergenerational Work
This is something we’d love to do more of, as practitioners with a wealth of experience working with children as well. There is such richness and value in bringing different generations together and exploring each other’s worlds via creative activities - in care homes, community venues and schools.
Here we are at Wentworth Court Care Home where residents joined with primary school children to explore the theme: English Country Gardens. This project was delivered in partnership with the Everyman Theatre.
When our Creative Age sessions coincided with Toddlers’ Group at Bethesda Church, we’d sometimes invite mums and toddlers in to our session, or we would go and join in with theirs.
The success of this experiment led to the Toddlers Group going for regular visits to the care home close by.
Working with individuals
Working 2-2-1 with people in care homes, private homes or gardens enables special, focused time. Red-nose interactions can work particularly well with people who struggle more in groups or who can’t leave their rooms. It often leads to deeply meaningful, or equally hilarious encounters, bringing people out of themselves in all sorts of surprising ways. We always work as a pair doing this kind of work.
Pop-up Projects – gardens and outdoor communal spaces
Thanks to the pandemic, this is something we now offer! When the weather is compliant, it can be wonderful to be outside together. We always do a site visit prior to the creative session, to check the spaces we’ll be working in.
Sessions on Zoom
We offer sessions on Zoom to individual households as well as groups. The focus can be
seated movement and dance
story-making
poetry
singing
crafting