Isle of Wight charity Independent Arts has launched a progressive new project running a weekly school room in a care home where school children and homes’ residents, learn alongside one another in a highly creative and mutually supportive environment.
Independent Arts have been developing links with Dover Park Primary School, Ryde over the past 2 years. The new project involves regularly placing the same reception aged children within the home for a whole morning of creative lessons alongside residents over a twelve-week pilot period.
Kerry Tindall Workshops Co-Ordinator explains:
“Spending time with the elderly, children learn very early on to be accepting, tolerant and compassionate, all necessary skills for ensuring a caring, inclusive society. They can also be shown new perspectives, and benefit from the wisdom of so many years of lived experience.
“Similarly, the elderly who are often the most isolated in the community have the opportunity, once again, to play an extremely important developmental role, providing the stability and ballast that children need to feel secure and to develop confidence as they grow up.”
Independent Arts have put together a carefully devised creative programme for this project across the 12-week pilot phase. As well as enjoying, lessons in art, music, poetry and story-telling, residents and pupils will be working together on an indoor garden and in their early classes have been learning Makaton sign language together.
The early signs are very positive. With such an incredible age range (the youngest pupil being 4 and the oldest being 94) lesson content is a constant surprise.
Last week during a Makaton signing class, resident Ron introduced the children to the V sign for victory telling them that it had been ‘invented by a very great man called Winston Churchill during WWII’.
