Wellbeing Packs Archives - Creative Arts East

Blues No More! Easing in the New Year with Shey Hargreaves, Telling Stories with Sounds

Hello everyone, Camilla here!

Happy New Year to you all, I hope you all had a cosy Christmas and are now making plans for 2022. Even if you are not planning on venturing out much this year, why not plan in some time to enjoy January’s creative pack! Put the kettle on, put your feet up, grab a pen and then relax with Shey Hargreaves CD which accompanies the pack.

Shey is a scriptwriter and performer, working across Norfolk and Suffolk who writes for theatre, audio and graphic novels. This month, she is releasing a new podcast drama, Badger Watching, about a brother and sister going for walks in the East Anglian countryside during lockdown.

The creative pack for January includes several activities to encourage us to listen creatively to the sounds that surround us in our everyday environment. The pack will give you the opportunity to see how you can use everyday sounds to evoke a place or tell a story.

Writing for radio and podcasts, needs to be highly descriptive and atmospheric, sounds and different voices have to be used with dramatic effect in order for the audience to imagine what the story is about and how it looks and feels for them. Sometimes sounds are recorded live and sometimes, they are added in later.

Shey introduced us to the work of Foley artists, in the two Zoom workshops recently, this is a concept used in film. Foley artistry is used in post-production to create sounds of people moving. Examples of these could be footsteps, rustling of clothes or even using coconut shells clicking together to sound like horses’ hooves! All of these sounds are intimate sounds that need to synchronise exactly to the image. You can go to Track 3 on the CD, to hear a few example sound effects.

Within the pack, there are activities and boxes provided for you to write down what sounds you can hear inside and outside your home. This is a mindful and calming exercise, encouraging you to halt all your other “essential” activities and become more centred with your surroundings. Once these describing words/adjectives have been found, you can then start to slot these words into a little story about what your home is like or what outside of your home is like.

Shey’s creative pack also explores what a podcast is and where to find them. A podcast is an audio recording that have been put online for anyone to listen to. They are often interviews with interesting people, but many are also stories and plays.

Below are some places where you can find some fantastic podcasts!

– Desert Island Discs’ castaway guests share the soundtracks of their lives! – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr

– BBC Sounds Podcasts – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/podcasts

– Apple Podcasts – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-podcasts/id525463029

– 53 of the Best Podcasts for Curious Minds – https://www.wired.co.uk/article/best-podcasts

– Google Podcasts – https://podcasts.google.com/

– Tune In Podcasts – https://tunein.com/podcasts/

– Spotify Podcasts – https://open.spotify.com/genre/podcasts-web

– You’re Dead To Me. A comedy history podcast for people who don’t like history and for those that do. Bringing together the best names in comedy and history to learn and laugh about the past –https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p07mdbhg

– The Archers – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0013rbj

– Woman’s Hour – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0013rrb

– The Sista Collective find tales of joy and success during the pandemic – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08wsdgf

– For anyone who wants to learn something new or brush up on their knowledge for a quiz! – In Our Time – Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/player

If you would like any help to access podcasts, Creative Arts East can help you via the phone or on video call.

I hope you enjoy your creative pack this month and enjoy all the sounds you tune into!

Stay safe and well,

All the best,

Camilla 🙂 x

Winter Fun with Glasshouse Dance

Hello everyone! We hope you are all feeling well and now starting to enjoy the Festive Christmas countdown!

Over the recent Winter months, the Our Day Out workshops have been led by Glasshouse Dance. Laura, Sarah, Alysha and Xenoula have been inspiring participants to move to music in very creative ways! All the activities are seated with the option to stand up too. It’s been a really relaxed and fun environment for all to enjoy.

The sessions have been running in Dereham, Watton, Attleborough, Thetford, Hunstanton, and Wells-Next-The-Sea and along with these in-person workshops, we have been posting out creative wellbeing packs, jam-packed with activities for you to enjoy at home, with an accompanying CD to follow along to. There is everything from discovering new movements with your hands and feet, to creating new dance moves using inspiration from looking out of the window!

This month’s pack also has a section about Archive Film, provided by our very own Community Cinema Manager Alice. Archive film is an important part of social and cultural history and records key moments in time, documenting traditions and people from bygone eras. The links in the pack, from the East Anglian Film Archive and BFI Player for example, provide you with the opportunity to reconnect with the past or even learn new things! Feel free to explore in your own time.

We have also collated, gathered, and created a film of various archive footage from across Norfolk, Suffolk and further afield, which has been viewed as a short film on a large screen at Our Day Out workshops with Glasshouse Dance over the last few months. The film is split into sections featuring carnivals, music and dancing in a public house in Suffolk, traditional dances and a depiction of what life was like in an artist’s commune in Norfolk.

Attendees enjoyed the quirky, funny, and captivating videos of what people used to do in the past! The room was filled with nostalgic chatter about what it was like back then.

Laura and Sarah of Glasshouse Dance have been dancing and working together for 13 years. They both began their dance careers as performers, but quickly realised their passion for teaching and choreography, and subsequently have been doing that for a combined total of nearly 35 years! Laura has won an award for her contributions to dance in Norfolk. She has also choreographed dances that have been performed at Sadlers Wells in London. Sarah has performed in theatres across the country, including the Royal Opera House and has also taught for dance companies such as, the English National Ballet, Richard Alston Dance Company and Rambert.

The remainder of the creative wellbeing pack focuses on an archive guessing game, where you have to guess which Norfolk highstreets are in the images, there is also a seated creative dance exercise and a recipe for a traditional Welsh tea bread called Bara Brith!

We hope you have enjoyed attending the Glasshouse Dance and Archive Film workshops or enjoyed attending some of the Zoom sessions. I hope you all have a cosy and festive December; with all the joys the month brings.

With Warm Wishes,

Camilla 🙂

Finding Your Voice – Creative Wellbeing Packs

Hello! It’s Camilla here, I’m back again! I hope everyone has been doing well! I’m happy that some sun has made a welcome appearance over the last few days, let’s hope it stays that way! This week’s blog is about creative writing and how we can find our writing voices!

Our Artist this month is James McDermott, he is a Scriptwriter and Poet based in North Norfolk. James represents the beauty and poetry of everyday life through his writing. The subject of his writing is drawn from his experiences, memories and feelings and he also likes to document the Norfolk accent in his work. James stated in the creative wellbeing pack, that he wants to help us all find our voice but mused over the fact that we all have our own voice! So where could our voices be lost? He suggested behind the back of the sofa? Or at University?

James took inspiration and direction from Tom Wells, a Playwright, who said: “your writing voices can sound like your speaking voice”. By writing the way you speak, you can produce a unique piece of writing, which will be different from anyone else’s writing. It also adds a natural element, as you don’t have pretend to be anything that you aren’t, meaning your writing is much more authentic and original.

James also took inspiration from the Poet and teacher, Anthony Anaxagorou, when he said: “to find your voice as a poet, just write down the movement of your mind”. The movements of your mind will be unique to you and the connections you make between the subjects of your writing will reveal the essence of your inner world. James suggests using a technique call Free Writing, this is where you set a timer and then try to write constantly, without stopping or thinking and of course without criticising what you have written!

It’s a stream of consciousness process and its aim is to let you release what’s in your mind and let it pour out into your writing on the page. The act of creation is unique and therefore you cannot fear making mistakes, as there are no mistakes to make! Self-expression is unique to everyone, what works for someone else when they write, may not work for another, but it’s okay! Writing is a trial-and-error process, one day you may feel like you love what you write, but another day, you may hate it! The journey of writing is full of twists and turns, but don’t ever feel like you aren’t ‘good enough’ to write or that you aren’t a ‘natural’. These negative labels stop you from taking the risk to just express yourself in whatever way suits you! Take the risk and express yourself, because you never know – you may find yourself – and your voice!

If you would like to send in some of your writing to Creative Arts East, please don’t hesitate! We would love to read them! You are welcome to email me with your writing at – camilla@creativeartseast.co.uk

James will be providing a Zoom workshop on Wednesday 29^th September 2pm-3pm and the Zoom link will be emailed to everyone who received a pack, so save the date!

Hope you all have a fab week!

Bye for now!

Camilla

Inspired by Birds – Creative Wellbeing Packs

Hello everyone, its me again – Sydney! It is nearly Spring and I am absolutely loving seeing the flowers shoot up through the undergrowth, I have spotted daffodils, snow drops and some lots of beautiful purple crocus. This month we have been working with the extremely talented dancer Sam Moss, who some of you might recognize from her Strictly Come Dancing themed workshops a couple of years ago.

The packs have been based around birds and the movement they use to fly and travel. My favourite bird is a Barn Owl, last year I had the most magical experience near Kings Lynn in West Norfolk – I was camping at the start of summer, I was sitting outside my tent at around 5.30am soaking in the quiet world around me. Suddenly and silently, a barn owl swooped right in front of me. It was such a peaceful moment, I felt so lucky to have been the only person in the world at that time to witness the birds morning wave!

Sam has created some extra videos for us which I have popped below, exploring some additional movements – some inspired by swans!

If you have anything to share, such as pictures of birds in your garden or your response to anything in the creative pack you can email them to me at sydney@creativeartseast.co.uk, post them on our Facebook page or send them back to us using the Freepost envelope! If you need any help sharing, you can give us a call and we will try our best to walk through it together.

Ta-ra for now and lots of love,

Sydney x

Folk Music & Dance – Creative Wellbeing Packs

Hello everyone, it’s me again – Sydney! Happy New Year and all that jazz! I hope everyone managed to feel festive over Christmas time, ate lots of lovely things and enjoyed yourselves. For the first Creative Wellbeing Pack of 2021 we were treated to an amazing selection of activities from Tessa Wingate, a singer, musician and community art practitioner with a specialism in Folk-style music.

Tessa has sent us over some links of videos to watch which will give a little more background to ‘Wassailing!’

Wassail! Singing to trees: a Pagan tradition

When I was growing up, I lived on a road called Orchard Close in St Albans. Historically, it was a huge apple orchard! All the gardens on the street had huge apple trees in them and once a year on ‘Apple Day’ dancers and celebrations were held to wish the trees good health! To me, this is similar to the tradition of Wassailing.

To fit in with this, I thought I would share one of my favourite apple-based recipes… Sweet Apple Cake!

Ingredients

115g unsalted butter
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
115g light brown sugar
1 large egg
7 tbsp milk
225g peeled and cubed Bramley or Granny Smith apples
100g sultanas or dried fruit of your choice
2 tbsp sugar (for sprinkling on the top)

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Butter and line a deep 20cm cake tin with baking parchment.
2. Mix the flour and cinnamon together in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub into the flour using your fingers, until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the light brown sugar. Add the egg and milk – add it gradually until you have a smooth, thick batter.
3. Add the apples and sultanas and mix to combine. Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and gently level out. Sprinkle over the demerara sugar, if using, and bake for 30-40 mins or until golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
4. Allow to cool in the tin for 15 mins and then carefully turn out onto a wire rack to cool further.

I love this cake served with custard or clotted cream!

Roz who receives our packs has sent us her beautiful lyrics for Tessa’s ‘English Country Garden’ activity. Here they are below – Aren’t they lovely!

How many butterflies flit to and fro

In an English country garden,

We’ll tell you some of them that we know,

Those we miss you’ll surely pardon,

Orange Tip, Red Admiral

Cabbage White, and Peacock too,

Painted Lady, Tortoiseshell, Fritillary,

There is nectar in the flowers, all the Summer long,

In an English Country Garden.

———————————-

And here’s to the robin, looking for worms,

He’s a regular visitor, sings a good turn.

The chaffinch & goldfinch sing different tunes,

The blackbird & thrush sing ‘till they see the moon

———————————-

And here’s to the postie who calls when he can.

He drives around happily in his bright red van.

He brings lots of goodies whenever he can,

Don’t know much about him; I think his name’s Dan

If you have anything to share, such as your pictures of your cake or your response to the music you can email them to me at sydney@creativeartseast.co.uk, post them on our Facebook page or send them back to us using the Freepost envelope! If you need any help sharing, you can give us a call and we will try our best to walk through it together.

Ta-ra for now and lots of love,

Sydney x

Christmas Creative Wellbeing Packs

Hello everyone, it’s me again – Sydney! I am feeling VERY festive indeed! It has been absolutely wonderful to stop by and see some of you as part of our doorstep visits this month, with our amazing musicians Kim and Joe.

This month’s wellbeing packs have been combined to created one super-duper bumper pack, full of lots of festive craft activities, curated by the lovely Genevieve. To accompany the packs, Genevieve has made videos showing you how to do the crafts included in the packs:

I have also been creating some Christmas decorations of my own, using only…. paper! Here is a video which tells you how to make origami trees. I strung mine together to make a little festive garland to go under my shelf!

If you have anything to share, such as your examples of mindful colouring or your response to the music you can email them to me at sydney@creativeartseast.co.uk or post them on our Facebook page! If you need any help sharing, you can give us a call and we will try our best to walk through it together.

Ta-ra for now and Merry Christmas!

Sydney x

Let’s Have a (Virtual) Tea Dance!

Our friends over at Britten Pears are running a virtual tea dance next week on Tuesday 8th December, and our Our Day Out participants are getting involved too! Usually they hold a tea dance every December at Snape Maltings, bringing together care homes, local community groups and dancing enthusiasts alike to enjoy music, dancing, tea and cake. Of course, like us and so many other organisations, they’ve had to adapt due to the pandemic and restrictions in place, so this year they’ll be holding the tea dance online!

We usually hold celebration gatherings ourselves as part of the Our Day Out programme, which bring participants from all of our different groups across Norfolk together to share in music and dance activities as a collective. Past celebrations events we’ve held include a Strictly Come Dancing-style extravaganza, a Big Sing, trips to Cley Nature Reserve, and a backstage tour of Rambert headquarters in London. Obviously this year, we haven’t been able to host these as we usually would, so we’re delighted to be taking part in Britten Pears’ Virtual Tea Dance this year.

The event will last 45 minutes, and includes a seven-piece big band, a presenter and professional dancers. There will be an opportunity for you to learn some dance moves and sing along. To make the event even more special, they suggest having a teacup and teaspoon at the ready to join in with some musical activity, and having some tea and cake to hand. You could even dress up! If you check out the trailer below, you may even spot some familiar faces, such as Laura and Sarah from Glass House Dance and opera singer Rob Gildon, who have both previously worked on the Our Day Out project!

Our Project Support Worker Sydney will be hosting a pre-tea dance Zoom session for our ODO and Operation: No Cold Shoulder participants at 1.30pm on Tuesday 8th, so if you want to join this then do get in touch with her here. You can find all the information about the tea dance here on the Snape Maltings website, including song-lyrics, bunting making instructions, and more!

We hope to see you there, tea cup in hand and ready to dance!

Creative Arts East are taking part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge this year – a match-funding campaign to raise £,2000 in individual giving. Every donation, no matter how small, will be DOUBLED by pledges we’ve already gathered. To give what you can, please visit creativeartseast.co.uk/christmaschallenge. The campaign is live from 12pm 1st December – 12pm 8th December.

Arts, Health & Wellbeing: How Our Day Out Makes a Difference

If you’ve been following our blog and other communication channels over the last few months, you’ll know that the way we deliver our flagship arts, health and wellbeing programme Our Day Out (dementia-inclusive creative workshops for all older people led by professional artists) has had to change dramatically since March, as organisations everywhere responded to the pandemic and subsequent government safety rules.

The remote Creative Wellbeing Packs we now offer, not just to our regular participants but to all older people in Norfolk and beyond, are going from strength to strength. With this in mind, and with 2020 coming to an end soon, we wanted to reflect on some of the key achievements of the Our Day Out programme over the last 3 years since the project began, and share some of the substantial successes it has achieved in terms of the links between arts, health and wellbeing.

Impact Report

In collaboration with our principle funder Spirit of 2012, we published an Impact Report containing the significant findings and analysis to come out of the project from 2016-2019. Take a look at some of the key statistics above, including our academically validated wellbeing data (more on this in the report, read it in full here).

Journal of Dementia Care

Since the beginning of Our Day Out we have worked with Dr Hannah Zeilig, who has provided us with invaluable academic insight and independent evaluation of the project, offered further analysis of our approach, and conducted interviews with participants. Dr Zeilig has also written about the project in her own research as well as in external publications. Her latest article appeared in the July/August 2020 edition of the Journal of Dementia Care, and focuses on Our Day Out’s particular mission in reaching people living with dementia living in rural communities.

Press and Publicity

Our Day Out has garnered increasing local press attention since the pandemic, and fed into national conversations about dementia, isolation, and the benefits of arts activity on health and wellbeing.

In April 2020, our Executive Director Natalie Jode appeared on BBC Radio Norfolk as part of their coverage on how local organisations have adapted their work in response to the pandemic. Natalie focused on how Our Day Out was responding, and also introduced the premiere of beautiful original song ‘A Day In With Our Day Out’ written by Mary Lovett and Kimberley Moore, two local musicians who had previously led workshops through the project and were the first artists to adapt their planned sessions into Creative Wellbeing Packs.

We also appeared on BBC Look East as part of their World Alzheimer’s Day coverage in September 2020. Their focus was on the profound impact that music can have on people living with dementia, and they interviewed one of our participants about her experience seeing her late husband respond to music during the later stages of his dementia.

Awards and Accolades

In 2019, we entered Our Day Out into the Royal Society for Public Health Awards under the Arts and Health category. We were nominated alongside some other incredibly worthy programmes, and so when we named as the winners, we were absolutely overjoyed. To have our programme recognised on such a national scale, and celebrate alongside project partners was without a doubt one of the stand-out moments for the organisation in 2019. The prestigious kitemark reignited our determination to break into the social prescribing framework, and has started to help us do so. Read more about our win here.

We are also nominated for a Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance Award – the Collective Power Award, which was presented in conjunction with Ideas Alliance, and celebrates the power of collaboration between different sectors that helps make projects like ours a success. We achieved ‘Highly Commended’ status, and were one of the runners up for the award, which we were incredibly pleased with, considering the stiff competition from other fantastic projects.

What Does Our Day Out Look Like Now?

Since the start of the pandemic, we have been continuing delivery of Our Day Out remotely, through a carefully curated series of free Creative Wellbeing Packs, sent twice-monthly. Each pack is based on a theme in collaboration with a different professional artist and contains activities to encourage gentle physical movement, keep the mind busy, and other ways for recipients to feel creative and connected from home. We also offer opportunities for them to share their creations, keep in touch with us and access extra content through our private Facebook group, website blog and regular phone-calls. We’ve worked particularly hard lately to make the packs image-rich so that they are as accessible as possible, and we also provide accompanying materials such as audio CDs where needed. So far, the pack themes have included Jazz, Typography and Bollywood to name a few!

We are also thrilled to announce that thanks to new funding from Independent Age, we are now able to offer the Creative Wellbeing Packs free of charge to all older people, whether they have previously engaged in the in-person Our Day Out workshops or not. This offer is available for those living in Norfolk and beyond, and we’re so pleased that now we will be able to reach more older people who may benefit from creative engagement at home during this difficult time.

If you are or know an older person who might enjoy and benefit from receiving twice-monthly Creative Wellbeing Packs, or are a health and/or social care professional who wants to collaborate with us to refer people on to the programme, then please do get in touch. You can phone us on 01953 713390 or email lea@creativeartseast.co.uk for more information.

We’d like to take this opportunity to extend a message of thanks to all our funders, not just of the Our Day Out programme but of Creative Arts East as a whole and our other projects. Your patience, support and flexibility in working with us to trial new approaches to delivery where possible during this time has been invaluable.

Creative Arts East are taking part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge this year – a match-funding campaign to raise £,2000 in individual giving. Every donation, no matter how small, will be DOUBLED by pledges we’ve already gathered. To give what you can, please visit creativeartseast.co.uk/christmaschallenge. The campaign is live from 12pm 1st December – 12pm 8th December.

Typography and Print – Creative Wellbeing Packs!

Hello Everyone, it’s Lea. I hope you are all well and have been enjoying and staying cool enough under the hot sun we’ve had recently! This month, we are introduced to artist Donna Thompson who has created some amazing type and print making content for you to get your hands on!

Donna has made a video to show you how to use your ink stamp pad, and the various materials you can try to make all sorts of shapes and lines for your own artwork. Give it a watch for some inspiration, pop on some music and have a go!

Click here to view Donna’s Printmaking video

After seeing Donna’s pack, I went on my own mindful wander to try and look at things creatively and differently. I wanted to find things that looked like faces upon second glance, and it was surprisingly fun to do! Some are more abstract than others and here is what I found:

Watch this Pixar short film and you will  find faces everywhere! https://prettybird.co/us/talent/collaborators/saschka-unseld/work/the-blue-umbrella/

Our brilliant volunteer and trustee at Creative Arts East Liz has also created her illuminated letter and typography friend- aren’t they great! Did you know that during lockdown, an archeologist at Oxborough Hall recently found a rare 600-year-old illuminated manuscript under the floorboards of an attic room. The gold leaf and blue colour can still be seen on the illuminated initials too! You can read more about this here: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/oxburgh-hall/news/archaeologist-discovers-rare-items-under-the-floor-of-oxburgh-hall

And Donna has compiled a list of extra resources at the bottom of this blog if you looking for even more interesting information related to the packs!

As always, if you would like to share anything you have created using the packs with us, please email Sydney at sydney@creativeartseast.co.uk or even call us and we’d love to hear all about it!

If you are a member of the ‘Our Day Out’ groups, feel free to share any of your creations on our private Facebook page! If you need any help sharing, you can give us a call and we will try our best to walk through it together.

Do let us know if you have any friends, family, or  neighbours who you think would benefit from receiving a Creative Wellbeing Pack too. You can contact us by calling us on 01953 713390 or by emailing info@creativeartseast.co.uk 

Ta-ra for now,

Lea and the Creative Arts East Team x

Illuminated letters:

https://www.ancient.eu/Illuminated_Manuscripts/

A Brief History of Illuminated Manuscripts by the Getty Museum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0L0SZ4TB58

William Morris (black and white G was one of his designs)

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/william-morris-text

Typography Faces:

http://typeand.press/new-blog/2016/10/19/typographic-portraits-by-jan-vermandere

Wassily Kandinsky:

Watch Kandinsky painting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc83deRcKMoWhat

10 Amazing facts about Kandinsky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaviUsz2r9M

Art and Design BBC: Kandinsky’s ‘Schaukeln’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/art-and-design-ks2-kandinskys-schaukeln/zv7g7nb

What Does Colour Sound Like? Kandinsky and Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xDnxkzQtdI&t=91s

Colour Theory by Kandinsky

https://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/academic/courses/12w259/Kandinsky_%20Color%20Theory.pdf

I spy with my little eye – A film about Kandinsky by Stefan Scheider (30 mins)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf5FvgJ7Lhk

Music that inspired Wassily Kandinsky:

Schoenberg - Three Piano Pieces

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeTFxbsVGrl

Wagner - Lohengrin: Prelude to Act I

Unleash Your Inner Poet – Creative Wellbeing Packs!

Hello there, It’s me again – Sydney! I hope that you all enjoyed getting your bodies moving and hips shaking with the help of our last creative wellbeing pack, lovingly inspired and co-created by Kay Wheatley. This month’s pack is all about creative writing and how we can use the world around us as inspiration for poems, stories and characters. Poppy Stevens (our creative writing expert) has created some truly wonderful poetry activities for you all to try in the comfort of your own home.

In previous wellbeing packs, the Creative Arts East ‘Our Day Out’ groups have responded to a couple of activities from Poppy, and sent us their poetic creations in the post. Poppy has then magically turned them into 2 beautiful poems for you all to read and see below! Sometimes I close my eyes and listen to the words, it helps me listen and visualise (give it a go!).

Click here to view the first collaborative poem called Window Frame

Click here to view the second collaborative poem called A Picture of Home

Here’s what Poppy has to say:

‘I have been so delighted by the response of the Our Day Out participants. All the poems I read were thoughtful, well written and creative. Having such a wide range of wonderful poems made my job; collating and editing them into a group poem, an absolute dream.
When reading the poems for ‘Window Frame’ what stood out were the beautiful descriptions of nature mixed with the tedious days and a feeling of hope during lock down. All the poems brought together have captured, nature, tedium, appreciation and hope in a beautifully descriptive way.
The poem ‘A Picture of Home’ was an absolute joy to curate. Every object poem that I received was thoughtful, descriptive, creative and held its own as a verse. Each verse was a piece that all together created a whole picture of home. ‘A Picture of Home’ explores the meaning and importance of the objects that make up our homes, in an imaginative and creative way, thanks to all your wonderful words.
Thank you so much, I have loved collaborating with you. I hope you enjoy the packs and continue writing fantastic poetry.’

If you’d like to try some more poetry activities, Poppy has some on her You tube channel – here is one below:

As always, if you receive our Creative Wellbeing Packs and would like to share any of your creativity with us, please email info@creativeartseast.co.uk or even call us- we are very open to hearing any poetry through the phone!

If you are a member of the ‘Our Day Out’ groups, feel free to share any of your creations on our private Facebook page! If you need any help sharing, you can give us a call and we will try our best to walk through it together.

Do let us know if you have any friends, family or neighbours who you think would benefit from receiving a Creative Wellbeing Pack too. You can contact us by calling us on 01953 713390 or by emailing info@creativeartseast.co.uk

Ta-ra for now,

Sydney and the Creative Arts East Team x